UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


UNIVERSITY  of  CALIFOKNU 

AT 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE  WORKS 


THOMAS  DE   QUINCEY. 


RIVERSIDE  EDITION. 


VOLIBIE  IV. 


^   r\  9  "^        ^ 


LITERARY   CRITICISM. 


^ 


THOMAS  DE  QUINCEY. 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY. 

ertie  EiiJWBiJie  Press,  Camfiritfff, 


Entered,  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1853,  by 

TiCKNOR    AND    FIELDS, 

In  tlie  Clerli's  Office  of  tlie  District  Court  of  tlie  District  of  Massacliusetts, 


Copyright,  1876, 
B¥   HDRD   AND   IIOUGUTON. 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge: 
Printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  and  Co>ni>any. 


CONTENTS. 


— * — 

PA0E 

Theory  of  Greek  Tragedy 1 

The   Antigone   of   Sophocles,    as   eepresented    on   the 

Edinburgh  Stage 25 

Homer  and  the  HoMERiOiB 60 

- —  Style < 172 

-^ — ^Rhetoric 314 

'iTTiANGUAGE       .         .         .         .         < 373 

■■'^-  English  Dictionaries 394 

Dryden's  Hexastich ...  401 

Notes  on  Walter  Savage  Landor 406 

Milton  ve,r$us  Southey  and  Landor       ...  .  455  ^ 

Orthographic  Mutineers,  with  a  Special  Reference  to 
THE  "Works  of  "Walter  Savage  Landor    ....  479 
-  CQjJ  "Wordsworth's  Poetry    .        .                .        .               .      495 
On  the  Knocking  at  the  Gate  in  Macbeth       .       .       .  533 
N'oTES 541 


LITERARY   CRITICISM. 


THEORY  or  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

The  Greek  tragedy  is  a  dark  problem.     We  can- 
not say  that  the  Greek  drama  is  such  in  any  more 
comprehensive   sense ;    for   the   comedy   of  Greece 
depends  essentially  upon  the  same  principles  as  our 
own.     Comedy,  as  the  reflex  of  the  current  of  social 
life,  will  shift  in  correspondence  to  the  shifting  move- 
ments of  civilization.     Inevitably  as  human  inter- 
course  in   cities    grows   more   refined,  comedy  will 
grow  more  subtle  ;  it  will  build  itself  on  distinctions 
of  character  less  grossly  defined,  and  on  features  of 
manners   more   delicate   and  impalpable.      But  the 
i  fundus,  the  ultimate  resource,  the  well-head  of  the 
comic,  must  forever  be  sought  in  the   same  field, 
jf  namely,  the  ludicrous  of  incident,  or  the  ludicrous 
I  cf  situation,  or  the  ludicrous  which  arises  in  a  mixed 
I  way  between  the  character  and  the  situation.     The 
age  of  Aristophanes,  for  example,  answered,  in  some 
respects,  to  our  own  earliest  dramatic  era,  namely, 
from  1588  to   1635,— an  age  not  (as  Dr.  Johnson 
assumes  it  to  have  been,  in  his  elaborate  preface  to 
Shakspeare)   rude   or   gross;    on   the   contrary,  fai 
more  intense  with  intellectual  instincts  and  agencies 
1 


2  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY, 

than  his  own,  which  was  an  age  of  collapse.  But 
in  the  England  of  Shakspeare,  as  in  the  Athens  of 
Aristophanes,  the  surface  of  society  in  cities  still 
rocked,  or  at  least  undulated,  with  the  ground- 
swell  surviving  from  periods  of  intestine  tumult 
and  insecurity.  The  times  were  still  martial  and 
restless ;  men  still  wore  swords  in  pacific  assemblies  ; 
the  intellect  of  the  age  was  a  fermenting  intellect ; 
it  was  a  revolutionary  intellect.  And  comedy  itself, 
colored  by  the  moving  pageantries  of  life,  was  more 
sinewy,  more  audacious  in  its  movements ;  spoke 
with  something  more  of  an  impassioned  tone  ;  and 
was  hung  with  draperies  more  rich,  more  voluminous, 
more  picturesque.  On  the  other  hand,  the  age  of 
the  Athenian  Menander,  or  the  English  Congreve, 
though  still  an  unsettled  age,  was  far  less  insecure 
in  its  condition  of  police,  and  far  less  showy  in  its 
exterior  aspect.  In  England  it  is  true  that  a  pictur- 
esque costume  still  prevailed  ;  the  whole  people  were 
still  draped^  professionally ;  each  man's  dress  pro- 
claimed his  calling  ;  and  so  far  it  might  be  said, 
"  natio  comcedia  est."  But  the  characteristic  and 
dividing  spirit  had  fled,  whilst  the  forms  survived  ; 
and  those  middle  men  had  universally  arisen  whose 
equivocal  relations  to  different  employments  broke 
down  the  strength  of  contrast  between  them.  Com 
edy,  therefore,  was  thrown  more  exclusively  upon 
the  interior  man  ;  upon  the  nuances  of  his  nature,  or 
upon  the  finer  spirit  of  his  manners.  It  was  now  the 
acknowledged  duty  of  comedy  to  fathom  the  coy 
nesses  of  human  nature,  and  to  arrest  the  fleeting 
phenomena  of  human  demeanor. 
But  tragedy  stood  upon  another  footing.     Whilst 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  3 

khe  comic  muse  in  every  age  acknowledges  a  rela- 
tionship which  is  more  than  sisterly, —  in  fact,  little 
short  of  absolute  identity, —  the  tragic  muse  of  Greece 
and  England  stand  so  far  aloof  as  hardly  to  recognize 
each  other  under  any  common  designation.  Few 
people  have  ever  studied  the  Grecian  drama ;  and 
hence  may  be  explained  the  possibility  that  so  little 
should  have  been  said  by  critics  upon  its  character- 
istic differences,  and  nothing  at  all  upon  the  philo- 
sophic ground  of  these  differences.  Hence  may  be 
explained  the  fact  that,  whilst  Greek  tragefly  has 
always  been  a  problem  in  criticism,  it  is  still  a  prob- 
lem of  which  no  man  has  attempted  the  solution. 
This  problem  it  is  our  intention  briefly  to  investigate. 
I.  There  are  cases  occasionally  occurring  in  the 
English  drama  and  the  Spanish,  where  a  play  is  ex 
hibited  within  a  play.  To  go  no  further,  every  pei 
son  remembers  the  remarkable  instance  of  this  in 
Hamlet.  Sometimes  the  same  thing  takes  place  in 
painting.  We  see  a  chamber,  suppose,  exhibited  by 
the  artist,  on  the  walls  of  which  (as  a  customary 
piece  of  furniture)  hangs  a  picture.-  And  as  this 
picture  again  might  represent  a  room  furnished  with 
pictures,  in  the  mere  logical  possibility  of  the  case 
we  might  imagine  this  descent  into  a  life  below  a  life 
going  on  ad  infinitum.  Practically,  however,  the 
process  is  soon  stopped.  A  retrocession  of  this 
nature  is  diflBcult  to  manage.  The  original  picture 
is  a  mimic, —  an  unreal  life.  But  this  unreal  life  is 
itself  a  real  life  with  respect  to  the  secondary  pic- 
ture ;  which  again  must  be  supposed  realized  with 
relation  to  the  tertiary  picture,  if  such  a  thing  were 
attempted.     Consequently,  at  every  step  of  the  in 


4:  THEORY  OF  GKEEK  TRAGEDY. 

trovolution  (to  neologize  a  little  in  a  case  justifying  a 
neologism),  something  must  be  done  to  diflferentiate 
the  gradations,  and  to  express  the  subordinations  of 
life  ;  because  each  term  in  the  descending  series, 
being  first  of  all  a  mode  of  non-reality  to  the  spec- 
tator, is  next  to  assume  the  functions  of  a  real  life 
in  its  relations  to  the  next  lower  or  interior  term  of 
the  series. 

What  the  painter  does  in  order  to  produce  thia 
peculiar  modification  of  appearances,  so  that  an 
object  shall  afi'ect  us  first  of  all  as  an  idealized  oi 
unreal  thing,  and  next  as  itself  a  sort  of  relation  to 
Bome  secondary  object  still  more  intensely  unreal, 
we  shall  not  attempt  to  describe  ;  for  in  some  techni- 
cal points  we  should,  perhaps,  fail  to  satisfy  the 
reader  ;  and  without  technical  explanations  we  could 
not  satisfy  the  question.  But,  as  to  the  poet,  all  the 
depths  of  philosophy  (at  least,  of  any  known  and 
recognized  philosophy)  would  less  avail  to  explain, 
speculatively,  the  principles  which,  in  such  a  case, 
should  guide  him,  than  Shakspeare  has  explained  by 
his  practice.  The  problem  before  him  was  one  of  his 
own  suggesting ;  the  difficulty  was  of  his  own  mak- 
ing. It  was,  so  to  differentiate  a  drama  that  it  might 
stand  within  a  drama,  precisely  as  a  painter  places  a 
picture  within  a  picture  ;  and  therefore  that  the 
secondary  or  inner  drama  should  be  non-realized 
upon  a  scale  that  would  throw,  by  comparison,  a 
reflex  coloring  of  reality  upon  the  principal  drama 
This  was  the  problem, —  this  was  the  thing  to  be 
accomplished  ;  and  the  secret,  the  law,  of  the  pro- 
cess  by  which  he  accomplishes  this  is,  to  swell, 
tumefy,  stiffen,  not  the  diction  only,  but  the  tenor  o/ 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  5 

the  thought, —  in  fact,  to  stilt  it,  and  to  give  it  a 
prominence  and  an  ambition  beyond  the  scale  which 
he  adopted  for  his  ordinary  life.  It  is,  of  course, 
therefore  in  rhyme, —  an  artifice  which  Shakspeare 
employs  with  great  efiect  on  other  similar  occasions 
(that  is,  occasions  when  he  wished  to  solemnize  or 
in  any  way  difi'erentiate  the  life) ;  it  is  condensed 
and  massed  as  respects  the  flowing  of  the  thoughts  ; 
it  is  rough  and  horrent  with  figures  in  strong  relief, 
like  the  embossed  gold  of  an  ancient  vase  ;  and  the 
movement  of  the  scene  is  contracted  into  short  gyra- 
tions, so  unlike  the  free  sweep  and  expansion  of  his 
general  developments. 

Now,  the  Grecian  tragedy  stands  in  the  very  same 
circumstances,  and  rises  from  the  same  original  basis. 
If,  therefore,  the  reader  can  obtain  a  glimpse  of  the 
life  within  a  life,  which  the  painter  sometimes  ex- 
hibits to  the  eye,  and  which  the  Hamlet  of  Shaks- 
peare exhibits  to  the  mind,  then  he  may  apprehend 
the  original  phasis  under  which  we  contemplate  the 
Greek  tragedy. 

II.  But  to  press  further  into  the  centre  of  things, 
perhaps  the  very  first  element  in  the  situation  of  the 
Grecian  tragedy,  which  operated  by  degrees  to  evoke 
all  the  rest,  was  the  original  elevation  of  the  scale 
by  which  all  was  to  be  measured,  in  consequence  of 
two  accidents :  1st,  the  sanctity  of  the  ceremonies  in 
which  tragedy  arose  ;  2d,  the  vast  size  of  the  ancient 
theatres. 

The  first  point  we  need  not  dwell  on  ;  everybody 
is  aware  that  tragedy  in  Greece  grew  by  gradual  ex- 
pansions out  of  an  idolatrous  rite, —  out  of  sacrificial 
pomp ;    though  we  do  not  find  anybody  who   has 


6  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

noticed  the  consequent  overruling  effect  which  this 
had  upon  the  quality  of  that  tragedy ;  how,  in  fact, 
from  this  early  cradle  of  tragedy,  arose  a  sanctity 
which  compelled  all  things  to  modulate  into  the  same 
religious  key.  But  next,  the  theatres  —  why  were 
they  so  vast  in  ancient  cities,  in  Athens,  in  Syracuse, 
in  Capua,  in  Eome  ?  Purely  from  democratic  influ- 
ences. I^Every  citizen  was  entitled  to  a  place  at  the 
public  scenical  representations.  In  Athens,  for  ex- 
ample, the  state  paid  for  him.  He  was  present,  by 
possibility  and  by  legal  fiction,  at  every  performance  ; 
therefore,  room  must  be  prepared  for  him.  And, 
allowing  for  the  privileged  foreigners  (the  domiciled 
aliens  called  /ustohcoi),  we  are  not  surprised  to  hear 
that  the  Athenian  theatre  was  adapted  to  an  audience 
of  thirty  thousand  persons.  It  is  not  enough  to  say 
naturally — inevitably  out  of  this  prodigious  compass, 
exactly  ten  times  over  the  compass  of  the  lai^ge 
Drury-Lane,  burned  down  a  generation  ago,  arose 
certain  immediate  resiilts  that  moulded  the  Greek 
tragedy  in  all  its  functions,  purposes,  and  phenom- 
ena. The  person  must  be  aggrandized,  the  coun- 
tenance must  be  idealized.  For  upon  any  stage 
corresponding  in  its  scale  to  the  colossal  dimensions 
of  such  a  house,  the  unassisted  human  figure  would 
have  been  lost ;  the  unexaggerated  human  features 
would  have  been  seen  as  in  a  remote  perspective, 
and,  besides,  have  had  their  expression  lost ;  the  un- 
reverberated  human  voice  would  have  been  undis- 
tinguishable  from  the  surrounding  murmurs  of  the 
audience.  Hence  the  cothurnus  to  raise  the  actor  ; 
hence  the  voluminous  robes  to  hide  the  disproportion 
thus  resulting  to  the  figure  ;  hence  the  mask  largei 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  1 

than  life,  painted  to  represent  the  noble  Grecian  con- 
tour of  countenance  ;  hence  the  mechanism  by  which 
it  was  made  to  swell  the  intonations  of  the  voice  likp 
the  brazen  tubes  of  an  organ. 

Here,  then,  you  have  a  tragedy,  by  its  very  origin, 
in  mere  virtue  of  the  accidents  out  of  which  it  arose, 
standing  upon  the  inspiration  of  religious  feeling, 
pointing,  like  the  spires  of  our  English  parish 
churches,  up  to  heaven  by  mere  necessity  of  its 
earliest  purpose,  from  which  it  could  not  alter  or 
Bwerve  per  saltum ;  so  that  an  influence  once  there 
was  always  there.  Even  from  that  cause,  therefore, 
you  have  a  tragedy  ultra-human  and  Titanic.  But 
next,  fi'om  political  causes  falling  in  with  that  early 
religious  cause,  you  have  a  tragedy  forced  into  a 
more  absolute  and  unalterable  departure  fi'om  a 
human  standard.  That  figure  so  noble,  that  voice  so 
profound,  and,  by  the  very  construction  of  the  the- 
atres as  well  as  of  the  masks,  receiving  such  solemn 
reverberations,  proclaim  a  being  elevated  above  the 
ordinary  human  scale.  And  then  comes  the  coun- 
tenance always  adjusted  to  the  same  unvarying  tone 
of  sentiment,  namely,  the  presiding  sentiment  of  the 
situation,  which  of  itself  would  go  far  to  recover  the 
key-note  of  Greek  tragedy.  These  things  being 
given,  we  begin  to  perceive  a  life  removed  by  a  great 
gulf  from  the  ordinary  human  life  even  of  kings  and 
heroes  ;  we  descry  a  life  within  a  life. 

III.  Here,  therefore,  is  the  first  great  landing- 
place,  the  first  station,  firom  which  we  can  contem- 
plate the  Greek  tragedy  with  advantage.  It  is,  by 
comparison  with  the  life  of  Shakspeare,  what  the 
amer  life  of  the  mimetic  play  in  Hamlet  is  to  the  outer 


8  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

life  of  the  Hamlet  itself.  It  is  a  life  below  a  life. 
That  is,  it  is  a  life  treated  upon  a  scale  so  sensibly 
different  from  the  proper  life  of  the  spectator,  as  to 
impress  him  profoundly  with  the  feeling  of  its  ideal 
ization.  Shakspeare's  tragic  life  is  our  own  life  ex- 
alted and  selected  ;  the  Greek  tragic  life  presupposed 
another  life, —  the  spectator's, —  thrown  into  relief 
before  it.  The  tragedy  was  projected  upon  the  eye 
from  a  vast  profundity  in  the  rear ;  and  between  this 
life  and  the  spectator,  however  near  its  phantasma- 
goria might  advance  to  him,  was  still  an  immeasur- 
able gulf  of  shadows. 

Hence,  coming  nearer  still  to  the  determinate 
nature  and  circumscription  of  the  Greek  tragedy,  it 
was  not  in  any  sense  a  development —  1st,  of  human 
character ;  or,  2d,  of  human  passion.  Either  of 
these  objects  attributed  to  tragedy  at  once  inoculates 
it  with  a  life  essentially  on  the  common  human  stand- 
ard. But  that  neither  was  so  much  as  dreamed  of  in 
the  Grecian  tragedy  is  evident  from  the  mere  mechan- 
ism and  ordinary  conduct  of  those  dramas  which 
survive  ;  those  especially  which  seem  entitled  to  be 
viewed  as  fair  models  of  the  common  standard. 
About  a  thousand  lines,  of  which  one  fifth  must  be 
deducted  for  the  business  of  the  chorus,  may  be 
taken  as  the  average  extent  of  a  Greek  tragic  drama. 
Five  acts,  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  lines  each,  allow 
no  sweep  at  all  for  the  systole  and  diastole,  the  con- 
traction and  expansion,  the  knot  and  the  denouement, 
of  a  tragic  interest,  according  to  our  modern  mean- 
ing. The  ebb  and  flow,  the  inspiration  and  expira- 
tion, cannot  find  room  to  play  in  such  a  narrow 
scene.     Were  the  interest  made  to  turn  at  all  upon 


THEOBT  OF  GREEK  TBA6EDT.  9 

the  evolution  of  character,  or  of  passion  modified  by 
character,  and  both  growing  upon  the  reader  through 
various  aspects  of  dialogue,  of  soliloquy,  and  of  mul- 
tiplied action,  it  would  seem  a  storm  in  a  wash- 
hand  basin.  A  passion  which  advanced  and  precipi- 
tated itself  through  such  rapid  harlequin  changes 
would  at  best  impress  us  with  the  feehng  proper  to 
a  hasty  melodrame,  or  perhaps  serious  pantomime. 
It  would  read  like  the  imperfect  outline  of  a  play  ; 
or,  still  worse,  would  seem  framed  to  move  through 
Buch  changes  as  might  raise  an  excuse  for  the  danc- 
ing and  the  lyiic  music.  But  the  very  external 
phenomena,  the  apparatus  and  scenic  decorations,  of 
the  Greek  tragedy,  all  point  to  other  functions. 
Shakspeare  —  that  is,  English  tragedy  —  postulates 
the  intense  life  of  flesh  and  blood,  of  animal  sensi- 
bility, of  man  and  woman,  breathing,  wakmg,  stir- 
ring, palpitating  with  the  pulses  of  hope  and  fear. 
In  Greek  tragedy,  the  very  masks  show  the  utter 
impossibility  of  these  tempests  or  conflicts.  Struggle 
there  is  none,  internal  or  external ;  not  like  Hamlet's 
with  his  own  constitutional  inertia,  and  his  gloomy 
irresolution  of  conscience  ;  not  like  Macbeth' s  with 
his  better  feeling  as  a  man,  with  his  generosity  as  a 
host.  Medea,  the  most  tragic  figure  in  the  Greet 
scene,  passes  through  no  flux  and  reflux  of  passion, 
through  no  convulsions  of  jealousy  on  the  one  hand, 
or  maternal  love  on  the  other.  She  is  tossed  to  and 
fro  by  no  hurricanes  of  wi-ath,  wrenched  by  no  pangs 
of  anticipation.  AU  that  is  supposed  to  have  passed 
out  of  the  spectator's  presence.  The  dire  conflict  no 
more  exhibits  itself  scenically,  and  "  coram  populo/' 
than  the  murder  of  Ler  two  innocent  children.    Wen? 


10  THEORY  OF  GBEEK  TRAGEDY. 

it  possiWe  that  it  should,  how  could  the  mask  be 
justified  ?  The  apparatus  of  the  stage  would  lose  al! 
decorum  ;  and  Grecian  taste,  or  sense  of  the  appro- 
priate, which  much  outran  the  strength  of  Grecian 
creative  power,  would  have  been  exposed  to  perpet- 
ual shocks. 

IV.  The  truth  is  now  becoming  palpable  :  certain 
great  situations  —  not  passion  in  states  of  growth,  of 
movement,  of  self-conflict  —  but  fixed,  unmoving  situ- 
ations  were  selected  ;  these  held  on  through  the  entire 
course  of  one  or  more  acts.  A  lyric  movement  of  the 
chorus,  which  closed  the  act,  and  gave  notice  that  it 
was  closed,  sometimes  changed  this  situation  ;  but 
throughout  the  act  it  continued  unchanged,  like  a 
statuesque  attitude.  The  story  of  the  tragedy  was 
pretty  nearly  involved  and  told  by  implication  in  the 
tableaux  vivans  which  presided  through  the  several 
acts.  The  very  slight  dialogue  which  goes  on  seems 
meant  rather  as  an  additional  exposition  of  the  inter- 
est—  a  commentary  on  the  attitude  originally  as- 
sumed —  than  as  any  exhibition  of  passions  growing 
and  kindling  under  the  eye  of  the  spectator.  The 
mask,  with  its  monotonous  expression,  is  not  out  of 
harmony  with  the  scene  ;  for  the  passion  is  essen- 
tially fixed  throughout,  not  mantling  and  undulating 
with  the  breath  of  change,  but  frozen  into  marble 
life. 

And  all  this  is  both  explicable  in  itself,  and  per- 
emptorily determined,  by  the  sort  of  idealized  life  — 
life  in  a  state  of  remotion,  unrealized,  and  translated 
into  a  neutral  world  of  high  cloudy  antiquity  —  which 
the  tragedy  of  Athens  demanded  for  its  atmosphere. 

Had  the  Greeks,  in  fact,  framed  to  themselves  tha 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  11 

idea  of  a  tumultuous  passion,  passion  expressing 
itself  by  the  agitations  of  fluctuating  will,  as  any  fit 
or  even  possible  subject  for  scenic  treatment,  in  that 
case  they  must  have  resorted  to  real  life  ;  the  more 
real  the  better.  Or,  again,  had  real  life  offered  to 
their  conceptions  a  just  field  for  scenic  exhibition,  in 
that  case  they  must  have  been  thrown  upon  conflicts 
of  tempestuous  passion ;  the  more  tempestuous  the 
better.  But  being,  by  the  early  religious  character 
of  tragedy,  and  by  the  colossal  proportions  of  their 
theatres,  imperiously  driven  to  a  life  more  awful  and 
still, —  upon  life  as  it  existed  in  elder  days,  amongst 
men  so  far  removed  that  they  had  become  invested 
with  a  patriarchal,  or  even  antediluvian  mistiness 
of  antiquity,  and  often  into  the  rank  of  demi-gods, — ■ 
they  felt  it  possible  to  present  this  mode  of  being  in 
states  of  suffering,  for  suffering  is  enduring  and  in- 
definite ;  but  never  in  states  of  conflict,  for  conflict 
is  by  its  nature  fugitive  and  evanescent.  The 
tragedy  of  Greece  is  always  held  up  as  a  thing  long 
past ;  the  tragedy  of  England  is  a  thing  now  pass- 
ing. We  are  invited  by  Sophocles  or  Euripides,  as 
by  some  great  necromancer,  to  see  long-buried  forms 
standing  in  solid  groups  upon  the  stage  —  phantoms 
from  Thebes  or  from  Cyclopian  cities.  But  Shaks- 
peare  is  a  Cornelius  Agrippa,  who  shows  us,  in  his 
mag-ic  glass,  creatures  yet  breathing,  and  actually 
mixing  in  the  great  game  of  life  upon  some  distant 
field,  inaccessible  to  us  without  a  magician's  aid. 

The  Greek  drama,  therefore,  by  its  very  necessities 
Droposing  to  itself  only  a  few  grand  attitudes  or 
lituations,  and  brief  dialogues  as  the  means  of  illum- 
Uiating  those  situations,  with  scarcely  anything  o( 


12  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

action  "  actually  occurring  on  the  stage,"  from  these 
purposes  derives  its  other  peculiarities  :  in  the  ele 
mentarj  necessities  lay  the  fundus  of  the  rest. 

V.  The  notion,  for  example,  that  murder,  or  vio- 
lent death,  was  banished  from  the  Greek  stage,  on 
the  Parisian  conceit  of  the  shock  which  such  bloody 
incidents  would  give  to  the  taste,  is  perfectly  erro- 
neous. Not  because  it  was  sanguinary,  but  because 
it  was  action,  had  the  Greeks  an  objection  to  such 
violences.  No  action  of  any  kind  proceeds  legiti- 
mately on  that  stage.  The  persons  of  the  drama  are 
always  in  a  reposing  state  "  so  long  as  they  are 
before  the  audience."  And  the  very  meaning  of  an 
act  is,  that  in  the  intervals,  the  suspension  of  the 
acts,  any  possible  time  may  elapse,  and  any  possible 
action  may  go  on. 

VI.  Hence,  also,  a  most  erroneous  theory  has 
arisen  about  Fate  as  brooding  over  the  Greek  tragic 
scene.  This  was  a  favorite  notion  of  the  two  Schle- 
gels.  But  it  is  evident  that  many  Greek  tragedies, 
both  amongst  those  w^hich  survive  and  amongst  those 
the  title  and  subjects  of  which  are  recorded,  did  not 
and  could  not  present  any  opening  at  all  for  this 
dark  agency.  Consequently  it  was  not  essential. 
And,  even  where  it  did  intervene,  the  Schlegels  seem 
to  have  misunderstood  its  purpose.  A  prophetic 
coloring,  a  coloring  of  ancient  destiny,  connected 
with  a  character  or  an  event,  has  the  effect  of  exalt- 
ing and  ennobling.  But  whatever  tends  towards 
this  result  inevitably  translates  the  persons  and 
their  situation  from  that  condition  of  ordinary  breath- 
ing life  which  it  was  the  constant  effort  of  the  Greek 
tragedy  to  escape  ;    and  therefore   it  was  that  the 


THEORY  OF  GUEEK  TRAGEDY  13 

Greek  poet  prefei-red  the  gloomy  idea  of  Fate  :  not 
because  it  was  essential,  but  because  it  was  elevat- 
ing. It  is  for  this  reason,  and  apparently  for  thia 
reason  only,  that  Cassandra  is  connected  by  iEs- 
chylus  with  Agamemnon.  The  Sphinx,  indeed,  was 
connected  with  the  horrid  tale  of  (Edipus  in  evtrry 
version  of  the  tale  ;  but  Cassandra  was  brought  upon 
the  stage  out  of  no  certain  historic  tradition,  or  prop- 
er relation  to  Agamemnon,  but  to  confer  the  solemn 
and  mysterious  hoar  of  a  dark  prophetic  woe  upon 
the  dreadful  catastrophe.  Fate  was  therefore  used, 
not  for  its  own  direct  moral  value  as  a  force  upon  the 
will,  but  for  its  derivative  power  of  ennobling  and 
darkening. 

VII,  Hence,  too,  that  habit  amongst  the  tragic 
poets  of  travelling  back  to  regions  of  forgotten  fable, 
and  dark  legendary  mythus.  Antiquity  availed 
powerfully  for  their  purposes,  because  of  necessity  it 
abstracted  all  petty  details  of  individuality  and  local 
notoriety  —  all  that  would  have  composed  a  character. 
It  acted  as  twilight  acts  (which  removes  day's 
"mutable  distinctions"),  and  reduced  the  historic 
person  to  that  sublime  state  of  monotonous  gloom 
which  suited  the  views  of  a  poet  who  wanted  only 
the  situation,  but  would  have  repelled  a  poet  who 
sought  also  for  the  complex  features  of  a  character. 
It  is  true  that  such  remote  and  fabulous  periods  are 
visited  at  times,  though  not  haunted,  by  the  modem 
dramatist.  Events  are  sought,  even  upon  the  French 
stage,  from  Gothic  or  from  Moorish  times.  But  in 
that  case  the  poet  endeavors  to  improve  and 
strengthen  any  traits  of  character  that  tradition  may 
have  preserved,  or  by  a  direct  effort  of  power  to 


|4  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

create  thorn  altogether  where  history  presents 
blank  neutrality ;  whereas  the  Greek  poet  used 
simply  that  faint  outline  of  character,  in  its  gross 
distinctions  of  good  and  bad,  which  the  situation 
itself  implied.  For  example,  the  Creon  of  Thebes  is 
pretty  uniformly  exhibited  as  tyrannical  and  cruel. 
But  that  was  the  mere  result  of  his  position  as  a 
rival  originally  for  the  throne,  and  still  more  as  the 
executive  minister  of  the  popular  vengeance  against 
Polynices  for  having  brought  a  tide  of  war  against 
his  mother  land  ;  in  that  representative  character, 
Creon  is  compelled  to  acts  of  cruelty  against  Anti- 
gone in  her  sublime  exercise  of  natural  piety  —  both 
sisterly  and  filial ;  and  this  cruelty  to  her,  and  to  the 
miserable  wreck,  her  father,  making  the  very  wrath 
of  Heaven  an  argument  for  further  persecution, 
terminates  in  leaving  him  an  object  of  hatred  to  the 
spectator.  But,  after  all,  his  conduct  seems  to  have 
been  purely  oflScial  and  ministerial.  Nor,  if  the 
reader  think  otherwise,  will  he  find  any  further  ema- 
nation fi'om  Croon's  individual  will  or  heart  than  the 
mere  blank  expression  of  tyranny  in  a  public  cause  ; 
nothing,  in  short,  of  that  complexity  and  interweaving 
of  qualities,  that  interaction  of  moral  and  intellectual 
powers,  which  we  moderns  understand  by  a  charac- 
ter. In  short,  all  the  rude  outlines  of  character  on 
the  Greek  stage  were,  in  the  first  place,  mere  inher- 
itances from  tradition,  and  generally  mere  determina- 
tions from  the  situation  ;  and  in  no  instance  did  the 
qualities  of  a  man's  will,  heart,  or  constitutional 
temperament,  manifest  themselves  by  and  through  a 
collision  or  strife  amongst  each  other ;  which  is  our 
test  of  a  dramatic  character.     And  therefore  it  was 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  IS 

tnat  elder  or  even  fabulous  ages  were  used  as  the 
true  natural  field  of  the  tragic  poet ;  partly  because 
antiquity  ennobled  ;  partly  also  because,  by  abstract- 
ing the  individualities  of  a  character,  it  left  the  his- 
toric figure  in  that  neutral  state  which  was  most 
entirely  passive  to  the  moulding  and  determining 
power  of  the  situation. 

Two  objections  we  foresee  —  1 .  That  even  jEschy 
lus,  the  sublimest  of  the  Greek  tragedians,  did  not 
always  go  back  to  a  high  antiquity.  He  himself  had 
fought  in  the  Persian  war  ;  and  yet  he  brings  both 
Xerxes  and  his  father  Darius  (by  means  of  his  appa- 
rition) upon  the  stage  ;  though  the  very  Marathon 
of  the  father  was  but  ten  years  earlier  than  the  Ther- 
mopylae and  Salamis  of  the  son.  But  in  this  instance 
the  scene  is  not  properly  Grecian ;  it  is  referred  by 
the  mind  to  Susa,  the  capital  of  Persia,  far  eastward 
even  of  Babylon,  and  four  months'  march  from  Hellas. 
Remoteness  of  space  in  that  case  countervailed  the 
proximity  in  point  of  time  ;  though  it  may  be  doubted 
whether,  without  the  benefit  of  the  supernatural,  it 
would,  even  in  that  case,  have  satisfied  the  Grecian 
taste.  And  it  certainly  would  not,  had  the  whole 
reference  of  the  piece  not  been  so  intensely  Athenian. 
For,  when  we  talk  of  Grecian  tragedy,  we  must  re- 
member that,  after  all,  the  Pagan  tragedy  was  in  an}' 
proper  sense  exclusively  Athenian  ;  and  the  tend- 
ency of  the  Grecian  taste,  in  its  general  Grecian 
character,  was  in  various  instances  modified  or  ab- 
solutely controlled  by  that  special  feature  of  its  ex- 
istence. 

2.  It  will  be  urged  as  indicating  this  craving  after 
<niliquity  to  be  no  peculiar  or  distinguishing  feature 


16  THEORY  OP  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

of  the  Greek  stage,  that  we  moderns  also  turn  away 
sometimes  with  dislike  from  a  modern  subject.  Thus, 
if  it  had  no  other  fault,  the  Charles  I.  of  Banks  is 
coldly  received  by  English  readers,  doubtless ;  but 
not  because  it  is  too  modern.  The  objection  to  it  is, 
that  a  parliamentary  war  is  too  intensely  political ; 
and  political,  moreover,  in  a  way  which  doubly  de- 
feated its  otherwise  tragic  power ;  first,  because 
questions  too  notorious  and  too  domineering  of  law 
and  civil  polity  were  then  at  issue ;  the  very  same 
which  came  to  a  final  hearing  and  settlement  at 
1688-9.  Our  very  form  of  government,  at  this  day, 
is  the  result  of  the  struggle  then  going  on, —  a  fact 
which  eclipses  and  dwarfs  any  sepatrate  or  private 
interest  of  an  individual  prince,  though  otherwise, 
and  by  his  personal  character,  in  the  highest  degree, 
an  object  of  tragic  pity  and  reverence.  Secondly, 
because  the  political  interest  afloat  at  that  era  (1649) 
was  too  complex  and  intricate  ;  it  wanted  the  sim- 
plicity of  a  poetic  interest.  That  is  the  objection  to 
Charles  I.  as  a  tragedy ;  not  because  modern,  but 
because  too  domineeringly  political ;  and  because 
the  political  features  of  the  case  were  too  many  and 
too  intricate. 

VIII.  Thus  far,  therefore,  we  now  comprehend  the 
purposes  and  true  locus  to  the  human  imagination  of 
the  Grecian  tragedy  —  that  it  was  a  most  imposing 
scenic  exhibition  of  a  few  grand  situations  ;  grand 
from  their  very  simplicity,  and  from  the  consequences 
which  awaited  their  denouement ;  and  seeking  sup- 
port to  this  grandeur  from  constantly  fixing  its  eye 
upon  elder  ages  lost  in  shades  of  antiquity  ;  or,  if  de» 
Darting  with  that  ideal  now  and  then,  doing  so  with 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  17 

n  view  to  patriotic  objects,  and  seeking  an  occasional 
dispensation  from  the  rigor  of  art  in  the  popular  in- 
dulgence to  whatever  touched  the  glory  of  Athens. 
Let  the  reader  take,  along  with  them,  two  other  cir- 
cumstances, and  he  will  then  complete  the  idea  of 
this  stately  drama  ,  —  first,  the  character  of  the  Dia' 
logue ;  secondly,  the  functions  of  the  Choi'us. 

IX.  From  one  hundred  and  fifty  to  one  hundred 
and  eighty  lines  of  hexameter  iambic  verse  compose 
the  dialogue  of  each  act.^  This  space  is  sufficient 
for  the  pui-pose  of  unfolding  the  situation  to  the  spec- 
tator ;  but,  as  a  means  of  unfolding  a  character,  would 
have  been  by  much  too  limited.  For  such  a  purpose, 
again,  as  this  last,  numerous  scenes,  dialogues,  or 
soliloquies,  must  have  been  requisite  ;  whereas,  gen- 
erally, upon  the  Greek  stage,  a  single  scene,  one 
dialogue  between  two  interlocutors,  occupies  the 
entire  act.  The  object  of  this  dialogue  was,  of  course, 
to  bring  forward  the  prominent  points  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  to  improve  the  interest  arising  out  of, —  1, 
its  grandeur  ;  2,  its  statuesque  arrangement  to  the 
eye  ;  or,  3,  the  burden  of  tragic  consequences  which 
it  announced.  With  such  puiposes,  so  distinct  from 
any  which  are  pursued  upon  the  modern  stage,  arose 
a  corresponding  distinction  of  the  dialogue.  Had 
the  dialogue  ministered  to  any  purpose  so  progressixe 
and  so  active  as  that  of  developing  a  character,  with 
new  incidents  and  changes  of  the  speakers  coming 
forward  at  every  moment,  as  occasions  for  evoking 
the  peculiarities  of  that  character, —  in  such  a  case 
the  more  it  had  resembled  the  movement,  the  fluctu- 
ations, the  hurry  of  actual  life  and  of  real  colloquial 
intercourse,  the  more  it  would  have  aided  the  views 
2 


18  THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDT. 

of  the  poet.  But  the  purpose  of  the  Greek  dialogue 
was  not  progressive  ;  essentially  it  was  reti'ospective^ 
For  example,  the  Heracleidce  opens  with  as  fine  and 
impressive  a  group  as  ever  sculptor  chiselled, —  a 
group  of  young  children,  princely  daughters  of  a 
great  hero,  whose  acts  resound  through  all  mythol- 
ogy, namely,  of  Hercules,  of  a  Grecian  cleanser  and 
deliverer  from  monsters,  once  irresistible  to  quell  the 
oppressor,  but  now  dead,  and  himself  the  subject  of 
outrage  in  the  persons  of  his  children.  These  youth- 
ful ladies,  helpless  from  their  sex,  with  their  grand- 
mother Alcmene,  now  aged  and  infirm,  have  arranged 
themselves  as  a  marble  group  on  the  steps  ascending 
to  the  altars  of  a  local  deity.  They  have  but  one 
guide,  one  champion, —  a  brother  in  arms  of  the  de- 
ceased Hercules,  and  his  reverential  friend  ;  but  this 
brave  man  also  suffering,  through  years  and  martial 
toils,  under  the  penalties  of  decaying  strength.  Such 
is  the  situation,  such  the  inauguration,  of  this  solemn 
tragedy.  The  dialogue  which  follows  between  lolaus, 
the  faithful  guardian  of  the  ladies,  and  the  local  ruler 
of  the  land,  takes  up  this  inaugural  picture, —  so 
pompous  from  blazing  altars  and  cloudy  incense,-^ 
so  ceremonial  from  the  known  religious  meaning  of 
the  attitudes, —  so  beautiful  from  the  loveliness  of 
the  youthful  suppliants  rising  tier  above  tier  accord- 
ing to  their  ages,  and  the  graduation  of  the  altar 
steps, —  so  moving  in  its  picture  of  human  calamity 
by  the  contrasting  figure  of  the  two  gray-haired  sup- 
porters,—  so  complete  and  orbicular  in  its  delineation 
of  human  frailty  by  the  surmounting  circumstances 
of  its  crest,  the  altar,  the  priestess,  the  temple,  the 
serene  Grecian  sky ;  this  impressive  picture,  having 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  19 

of  itself  appealed  to  every  one  of  thirty  thousand 
hearts,  having  already  challenged  universal  attention, 
IS  now  explained  and  unfolded  through  the  entire 
first  act.  lolaus,  the  noble  old  warrior,  who  had 
clung  the  closer  to  the  fluttering  dovecot  of  his 
buried  friend  from  the  unmerited  persecution  which 
had  assaulted  them,  comments  to  the  stranger  prince 
upon  the  spectacle  before  him, —  a  spectacle  signifi- 
cant to  Grecian  eyes,  intelligible  at  once  to  every- 
body, but  still  rare,  and  witnessed  in  practice  by 
nobody.  The  prince,  Demophoon,  is  a  ruler  of 
Athens ;  the  scene  is  placed  in  the  Attic  territoiy, 
but  not  in  Athens  ;  about  fifteen  miles,  in  fact,  from 
that  city,  and  not  far  from  the  dread  field  of  Marathon. 
To  the  prince  lolaus  explains  the  lost  condition  of 
his  young  flock.  The  ruler  of  Argos  had  driven  them 
out  of  every  asylum  in  the  Peloponnesus.  From  city 
to  city  he  had  followed  them  at  the  heels,  with  his 
cruel  heralds  of  persecution.  They  were  a  party  of 
unhappy  fugitives  (most  of  them  proclaiming  their 
innocence  by  their  very  age  and  helplessness),  that 
had  run  the  circle  of  Greek  hospitality  ;  everywhere 
had  been  hunted  out  like  wild  beasts,  or  those  com- 
mon nuisances  from  which  their  illustrious  father  had 
liberated  the  earth  ;  that  the  long  circuit  of  their  un- 
happy wanderings  had  brought  them  at  the  last  to 
Athens,  in  which  they  had  a  final  confidence,  as  know- 
ing well,  not  only  the  ju<^tice  of  that  state,  but  that 
she  only  would  not  be  moved  from  her  purposes  by 
fear  of  the  aggressor.  No  finer  opening  can  be 
imagined.  The  statuesque  beauty  of  the  grcup,  and 
the  unparalleled  persecution  which  the  first  act  ex- 
poses (a  sort  of  misery  and  an  absolute  hostility  of 


20  THEORT  OP  GREEK  TRAGEDY. 

the  human  race  to  which  our  experience  suggests  uo 
Dorresponding  case,  except  that  of  a  leper  in  the 
middle  ages,  or  the  case  of  a  man  under  a  papal  in- 
terdict), fix  the  attention  of  the  spectators  beyond 
any  other  situation  in  Grecian  tragedy.  And  the 
compliment  to  Athens,  not  verbal,  but  involved  in 
the  very  situation,  gave  a  depth  of  interest  to  this 
drama,  for  the  very  tutelary  region  of  the  drama, 
which  ought  to  stamp  it  with  a  sort  of  prerogative 
as  in  some  respects  the  ideal  tragedy  or  model  of  the 
Greek  theatre. 

Now,  this  one  dialogue,  as  filling  one  act  of  a  par- 
ticular drama,  is  quite  sufficient  to  explain  the  view 
we  take  of  the  Greek  tragic  dialogue.  It  is  altoyether 
retrospective.  It  takes  for  its  theme  the  visible  group 
arranged  on  the  stage  before  the  spectators  from  the 
first.  Looking  back  to  this,  the  two  interlocutors 
(supposed  to  come  forward  upon  the  stage)  contrive 
between  them,  one  by  pertinent  questions,  the  other 
by  judicious  management  of  his  replies,  to  bring  out 
those  circumstances  in  the  past  fortunes  and  imme- 
diate circumstances  of  this  interesting  family,  which 
may  put  the  audience  in  possession  of  all  which  it  is 
important  for  them  to  know.  The  reader  sees  the 
dark  legendary  character  which  invests  the  whole 
tale  ;  and  in  the  following  acts  this  darkness  is  made 
more  emphatic  from  the  fact  that  incidents  are  used 
of  which  contradictory  versions  existed,  some  poets 
adopting  one  version,  some  another,  so  cloudy  and 
uncertain  were  the  facts.  All  this  apocrypJial  gloom 
aids  that  sanctity  and  awe  which  belong  to  another 
and  a  higher  mode  of  life ;  to  that  slumbering  life  of 
sculpture,  as  opposed  to  painting,  which  we  have 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  21 

called  a  life  within  a  life.  Grecian  taste  would  inevi- 
tably require  that  the  dialogue  should  be  adjusted  to 
this  starting-point  and  standard.  Accordingly,  in 
the  first  place,  the  dialogue  is  always  (and  in  a  de- 
gree quite  unperceived  by  the  translators  up  to  this 
time)  severe,  massy,  simple,  yet  solemnized  inten- 
tionally by  the  use  of  a  select  vocabulary,  corres- 
ponding (in  point  of  archaism  and  remoteness  from 
ordinary  use)  to  our  scriptural  vocabulary.  Secondly, 
the  metre  is  of  a  kind  never  yet  examined  with  suit- 
able care.  There  were  two  objects  aimed  at  in  the 
Greek  iambic  of  the  tragic  drama ;  and  in  some 
measure  these  objects  were  in  collision  with  each 
other,  unless  most  artfully  managed.  One  was,  to 
exhibit  a  purified  imitation  of  real  human  conversa- 
tion. The  other  was,  to  impress  upon  this  colloquial 
form,  thus  far  by  its  veiy  nature  recalling  ordinary 
human  life,  a  character  of  solemnity  and  religious 
conversation.  Partly  this  was  effected  by  acts  of 
omission  and  commission ;  by  banishing  certain 
words  or  forms  of  words  ;  by  recalling  others  of  high 
antiquity  :  particular  tenses,  for  instance,  were  never 
used  by  the  tragic  poets ;  not  even  by  Euripides 
(the  most  Wordsworthian^  of  the  Athenian  poets  in 
the  circumstance  of  having  a  peculiar  theory  of  poetic 
diction,' which  lowered  its  tone  of  separation,  and 
took  it  down  fi'om  the  cothurnus) ;  other  verbal  forms, 
again,  were  used  nowhere  but  upon  the  stage.  Partly, 
therefore,  this  consecration  of  the  tragic  style  was 
effected  by  the  antique  cast,  and  the  exclusive  cast 
of  its  phraseology.  But,  partly  also,  it  was  effected 
by  the  metre.  From  whatever  cause  it  may  arise, — 
jhiefly,  perhaps,  from  differences  in  the  genius  of  tho 


12  THEORY  OP  GREEK  TRAGEDY 

two  languages, —  certain  it  is,  that  the  Latin  iambics 
of  Seneca,  &c.  (in  the  tragedies  ascribed  to  him), 
cannot  be  so  read  by  an  English  mouth  as  to  produce 
anything  like  the  sonorous  rhythmus  and  the  grand 
intonation  of  the  Greek  iambics.  This  is  a  curious 
fact,  and  as  yet,  we  believe,  unnoticed.  But  over  and 
above  this  original  adaptation  of  the  Greek  language 
to  the  iambic  metre,  we  have  no  doubt  whatever  that 
the  recitation  of  verse  on  the  stage  was  of  an  artificial 
and  semi-musical  character.  It  was  undoubtedly 
much  more  sustained  and  intonated  with  a  slow  and 
measured  stateliness,*  which,  whilst  harmonizing  it 
with  the  other  circumstances  of  solemnity  in  Greek 
tragedy,  would  bring  it  nearer  to  music.  Beyond  a 
doubt,  it  had  the  effect  (and  might  have  the  effect 
even  now,  managed  by  a  good  reader)  of  the  recita- 
tive in  the  Italian  opera  ;  as,  indeed,  in  other  points, 
the  Italian  opera  is  a  much  nearer  representative  of 
the  Greek  tragedy,  than  the  direct  modern  tragedy, 
professing  that  title. 

X.  As  to  the  Chorus,  nothing  needs  to  be  said 
upon  this  element  of  the  Athenian  tragedy.  Every- 
body knows  how  solemn,  and  therefore  how  solem- 
nizing, must  have  been  the  richest  and  most  lyrical 
music,  the  most  passionate  of  the  ancient  poetry,  the 
most  dithyrambic  of  tragic  and  religious  raptures, 
supported  to  the  eye  by  the  most  hieroglyphic  and 
therefore  mysterious  of  dances.  For  the  dances  of 
the  chorus,  the  strophe  and  the  antistrophe,  were 
symbolic,  and  therefore  full  of  mysterious  meanings ; 
and  not  the  less  impressive,  because  these  meanings 
'ind  these  symbols  had  lost  their  significancy  to  the 
mob  ;  since  the  very  cause  of  that  loss  lay  in  the 


THEORY  OF  GREEK  TRAGEDY.  23 

antiquity  of  their  origin.  One  great  error  which 
remains  to  be  remov^ed  is  the  notion  that  the  chorus 
either  did  support,  or  was  meant  to  support,  the  office 
of  a  moral  teacher.  The  chorus  simply  stood  on  the 
level  of  a  sympathizing  spectator,  detached  from  the 
business  and  interests  of  the  action  ;  and  its  office 
was  to  guide  or  to  interpret  the  sympathies  of  the 
audience.  Here  was  a  great  error  of  Milton's,  which 
will  be  found  in  two'  separate  places.  At  present 
it  is  sufficient  to  say,  that  the  mysterious  solemnity 
conferred  by  the  chorus  presupposes  and  is  in  per- 
fect harmony  with  om-  theory  of  a  life  within  a  life, — 
a  life  sequestrated  into  some  far-ofi"  slumbering  state, 
having  the  severe  tranquillity  of  Hades, —  a  life  sym- 
bohzed  by  the  marble  life  of  sculpture  ;  but  utterly 
out  of  all  symmetry  and  proportion  to  the  realities 
of  that  human  life  which  we  modems  take  up  as  the 
basis  of  our  tragic  drama. 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES, 

AS  REPRESENTED   ON  THE  EDINBURGH  STAGE. 

Every  thing  in  our  days  is  new.  Roads,  for  in- 
stance, which,  being  formerly  '  of  the  earth  earthy,' 
and  therefore  perishable,  are  now  iron,  and  next  door 
to  being  immortal ;  tragedies,  which  are  so  entirely 
new,  that  neither  we  nor  our  fathers,  through  eighteen 
hundred  and  ninety  odd  years,  gone  by,  since  CtEsar 
did  our  little  island  the  honor  to  sit  upon  its  skirts, 
have  ever  seen  the  like  to  this  '  Antigone  ; '  and,  finally, 
even  more  new  are  readers,  who,  being  once  an  obe- 
dient race  of  men,  most  humble  and  deferential  in  the 
presence  of  a  Greek  scholar,  are  now  become  intrac- 
tably mutinous;  keep  their  hats  on  whilst  he  is  ad- 
dressing them ;  and  listen  to  him  or  not,  as  he  seema 
to  talk  sense  or  nonsense.  Some  there  are,  however, 
who  look  upon  all  these  new  things  as  being  intensely 
old.  Yet,  surely  the  railroads  are  new  ?  No  ;  not  at 
all.  Talus,  the  iron  man  in  Spenser,  who  continually 
ran  round  the  island  of  Crete,  administering  gentle 
warning  and  correction  to  otfenders,  by  flooring  them 
with  an  iron  flail,  was  a  very  ancient  personage  in 
Greek  fable ;  and  the  received  opinion  is,  that  he  must 
have  been  a  Cretan  railroad,  called  The  Great  Circular 
Coast-Line,  that  carried  my  lords  the  judges  on  theii 
eircuits  of  jail-delivery.     The  '  Antigone,'  again,  thai 


26  THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES. 

wears  the  freshness  of  morning  dew,  and  is  so  fresh 
and  dewy  in  the  beautiful  person  of  Miss  Faucit,  had 
really  begun  to  look  faded  on  the  Athenian  stage,  and 
even  '  of  a  certain  age,'  about  the  death  of  Pericles, 
whose  meridian  year  was  the  year  444  before  Christ. 
Lastly,  these  modern  readers^  that  are  so  obstinately 
rebellious  to  the  once  Papal  authority  of  Greek,  they  — 
No ;  on  consideration,  they  are  new.  Antiquity  pro- 
duced many  monsters,  but  none  like  them. 

The  ti'uth  is,  that  this  vast  multiplication  of  readers, 
within  the  last  twenty-five  years,  has  changed  the 
prevailing  character  of  readers.  The  minority  has 
become  the  overwhelming  majority :  the  quantity  has 
disturbed  the  quality.  Formerly,  out  of  eveiy  five 
readers,  at  least  four  were,  in  some  degree,  classical 
scholars  :  or,  if  that  would  be  saying  too  much,  if  two 
of  the  four  had  '  small  Latin  and  less  Greek,'  they 
were  generally  connected  with  those  who  had  more,  or 
at  the  worst,  who  had  much  reverence  for  Latin,  and 
more  reverence  for  Greek.  If  they  did  not  all  share 
in  the  services  of  the  temple,  all,  at  least,  shared  in 
<he  superstition.  But,  now-a-days,  the  readers  come 
chiefly  from  a  class  of  busy  people  who  care  very 
little  for  ancestral  crazes.  Latin  they  have  heard  of, 
and  some  of  them  know  it  as  a  good  sort  of  industrious 
language,  that  even,  in  modern  times,  has  turned  out 
many  useful  books,  astronomical,  medical,  philosophi- 
cal, and  (as  Mrs.  Malaprop  observes)  diabolical ;  but, 
as  to  Greek,  they  think  of  it  as  of  an  ancient  mummy : 
you  spend  an  infinity  of  time  in  unswathing  it  from  its 
old  dusty  wrappers,  and,  when  you  have  come  to  the 
Dnd,  what  do  you  find  for  your  pains  }  A  woman's 
face,  or  a  baby's,  that  certainly  is  not  the  better  for 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  27 

being  three  thousand  years  old ;  and  perhaps  a  few 
ears  of  wheat,  stolen  from  Pharaoh's  granary ;  which 
wheat,  when  sown'^  in  Norfolk  or  Mid-Lothian,  reaped, 
thrashed,  ground,  baked,  and  hunted  through  all  sorts 
of  tortures,  yields  a  breakfast  roll  that  (as  a  Scottish 
baker  observed  to  me)  is  '  not  just  that  bad.'  Cer- 
tainly not :  not  exactly  '  that  bad  ; '  not  worse  than  the 
worst  of  our  own ;  but  still,  much  fitter  for  Pharaoh'^s 
breakfast-table  than  for  ours. 

I,  for  my  own  part,  stand  upon  an  isthmus,  con- 
necting me,  at  one  terminus,  with  the  rebels  against 
Greek,  and,  at  the  other,  with  those  against  whom  they 
are  in  rebellion.  On  the  one  hand,  it  seems  shocking 
to  me,  who  am  steeped  to  the  lips  in  antique  prejudices, 
that  Greek,  in  unlimited  quantities,  should  not  secure  a 
limited  privilege  of  talking  nonsense.  Is  all  reverence 
extinct  for  old,  and  ivy-mantled,  and  worm-eaten 
things  ?  Surely,  if  your  own  grandmother  lectures  on 
morals,  which  perhaps  now  and  then  she  does,  she  will 
command  that  reverence  from  you,  by  means  of  her 
grandmotherhood,  which  by  means  of  her  ethics  she 
might  not.  To  be  a  good  Grecian,  is  now  to  be  a 
faded  potentate  ;  a  sort  of  phantom  Mogul,  sitting  at 
Delhi,  with  an  English  sepoy  bestriding  his  shoulders. 
Matched  against  the  master  of  ologies,  in  our  days, 
\he  most  accomplished  of  Grecians  is  becoming  what 
the  '  master  of  sentences '  had  become  long  since,  in 
competition  with  the  political  economist.  Yet,  be 
assured,  reader,  that  all  the  '  ologies '  hitherto  chris- 
tened oology,  ichthyology,  ornithology,  conchology, 
palaeodontology,  &c.,  do  not  furnish  such  mines  of 
labor  as  does  the  Greek  language  when  thoroughly 
searched.     The   '  Mithridates '  of  Adelung    improved 


28         THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES. 

by  the  commentaries  of  Vater  and  of  subsequent  au- 
thors, numbers  up  about  four  thousand  languages  and 
jargons  on  our  polyglot  earth ;  not  including  the 
chuckling  of  poultry,  nor  caterwauling,  nor  barking, 
howlfug,  braying,  lowing,  nor  other  respectable  and 
ancient  dialects,  that  perhaps  have  their  elegant  and 
their  vulgar  varieties,  as  well  as  prouder  forms  of  com- 
munication.  But  my  impression  is,  that  the  Greek, 
taken  by  itself,  this  one  exquisite  language,  considered 
as  a  quarry  of  intellectual  labor,  has  more  work  in  it, 
is  more  truly  a  piece  de  resistance^  than  all  the  re- 
maining three  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine, 
with  caterwauling  thrown  into  the  bargain.  So  far  I 
side  with  the  Grecian,  and  think  that  he  ought  to  be 
honored  with  a  little  genuflexion.  Yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  finest  sound  on  this  earth,  and  which  rises 
like  an  orchestra  above  all  the  uproars  of  earth,  and 
the  Babels  of  earthly  languages,  is  truth  absolute 
truth  ;  and  the  hatefulest  is  conscious  falsehood.  Now, 
there  is  falsehood,  nay  (which  seems  strange),  even 
sycophancy,  in  the  old  undistinguishing  homage  to  all 
that  is  called  classical.  Yet  why  should  men  be  syco- 
phants in  cases  where  they  must  be  disinterested } 
Sycophancy  grows  out  of  fear,  or  out  of  mercenary 
self-interest.  But  what  can  there  exist  of  either  point- 
ing to  an  old  Greek  poet  ?  Cannot  a  man  give  his 
free  opinion  upon  Homer,  without  fearing  to  be  way- 
laid by  his  ghost }  But  it  is  not  that  which  startles 
him  from  publishing  the  secret  demur  which  his  heart 
prompts,  upon  hearing  false  praises  of  a  Greek  poet, 
or  praisefs  which,  if  not  false,  are  extravagant.  What 
he  fears,  is  the  scorn  of  his  contemporaries.  Let 
©nee  a  party  have  formed  itself  considerable  enough  to 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  29 

protect  a  man  from  the  charge  of  presumption  in 
throwing  off  the  yoke  of  servile  allegiance  to  all  that 
is  called  classical,  —  let  it  be  a  party  ever  so  small 
numerically,  and  the  rebels  will  soon  be  many.  What 
a  man  feai-s  is,  to  affront  the  whole  storm  of  indigna- 
tion, real  and  atfected,  in  his  own  solitary  person. 
'  Goth  ! '  '  Vandal ! '  he  heai*s  from  every  side.  Break 
that  storm  by  dividing  it,  and  he  will  face  its  anger. 
'  Let  me  be  a  Goth,'  he  mutters  to  himself,  '  but  let  me 
not  dishonor  myself  by  atiecting  an  enthusiasm  which 
my  heart  rejects  ! ' 

Ever  since  the  restoration  of  letters  there  has  been  a 
cabal,  an  academic  interest,  a  factious  league  amongst 
universities,  and  learned  bodies,  and  individual  scholare, 
for  exalting  as  something  superierrestrial,  and  quite 
unapproachable  by  moderns,  the  monuments  of  Greek 
literature.  France,  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIV.,  Eng- 
land, in  the  latter  part  of  that  time ;  in  fact,  each 
country  as  it  grew  polished  at  some  cost  of  strength, 
carried  this  craze  to  a  dangerous  excess  —  dangerous 
as  all  things  false  are  dangerous,  and  depressing  to 
the  aspirations  of  genius.  Boileau,  for  instance,  and 
Addison,  though  neither^  of  ihcm  accomplished  in 
scholarship,  nor  either  of  them  extensively  read  in  any 
department  of  the  classic  literature,  speak  every  whei"e 
j»f  the  classics  as  having  notoriously,  and  by  the 
general  confession  of  polished  nations,  carried  the 
functions  of  poetry  and  eloquence  to  that  sort  of  fault- 
less beauty  which  probably  does  realh/  exist  in  the 
Greek  sculpture.  There  are  few  things  perfect  in 
this  world  of  frailty.  Even  lightning  is  sometimes  a 
♦iiilure :  Niagara  has  horrible  faults  ;  and  IMont  Blanc 
might  b3  improved  by  a  century  of  chiselling  from 


30  THE    ANTIGONE   OF    SOPHOCLES. 

judicious  artists.  Such  are  the  works  of  blind  ele- 
ments, which  (poor  things !)  cannot  improve  by  expe- 
rience. As  to  man  who  does,  the  sculpture  of  the 
Greeks  in  their  marbles  and  sometimes  in  their  gems, 
seems  the  only  act  of  his  workmanship  which  has  hit 
the  bull's  eye  in  the  target  at  which  we  are  all  aiming. 
Not  so,  with  permission  from  Messrs.  Boileau  and  Ad- 
dison, the  Greek  literature.  The  faults  in  this  are 
often  conspicuous;  nor  are  they  likely  to  be  hidden 
for  the  coming  century,  as  they  have  been  for  the 
three  last.  The  idolatry  will  be  shaken :  as  idols, 
some  of  the  classic  models  are  destined  to  totter :  and 
I  foresee,  without  gifts  of  prophecy,  that  many  laborers 
will  soon  be  in  this  field  —  many  idoloclasts,  who  will 
expose  the  signs  of  disease,  which  zealots  had  inter- 
preted as  power ;  and  of  weakness,  which  is  not  the 
less  real  because  scholars  had  fancied  it  health,  nor  the 
less  injurious  to  the  total  effect  because  it  was  inevita- 
ble under  the  accidents  of  the  Grecian  position. 

Meantime,  I  repeat,  that  to  disparage  any  thing 
whatever,  or  to  turn  the  eye  upon  blemishes,  is  no  part 
of  my  present  purpose.  Nor  could  it  be  :  since  the 
one  sole  section  of  the  Greek  literature,  as  to  which  I 
profess  myself  an  enthusiast,  happens  to  be  the  tragic 
drama ;  and  here,  only,  1  myself  am  liable  to  be  chal- 
lenged as  an  idolater.  As  regards  the  Antigone  in 
particular,  so  profoundly  do  I  feel  the  impassioned 
beauty  of  her  situation  in  connection  with  her  charac- 
ter, that  long  ago,  in  a  work  of  my  own  (yet  unpub- 
lished), having  occasion  (by  way  of  overture  intro- 
ducing one  of  the  sections)  to  cite  before  the  reader  5 
eye  the  chief  pomps  of  the  Grecian  theatre,  a*'*er 
invoking  '  the  magnificent   witch '   Medea,  I  call     -p 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  31 

Antigone  to  this  shadowy  stage  by  the  apostrophe, 
'  Holy  heathen,  daughter  of  God,  before  God  was 
known, s  flower  from  Paradise  after  Paradise  was 
closed ;  that  quitting  all  things  for  which  flesh  lan- 
guishes, safety  and  honor,  a  palace  and  a  home,  didst 
make  thyself  a  houseless  pariah,  lest  the  poor  pariah 
king,  thy  outcast  father,  should  want  a  hand  to  lead 
him  in  his  darkness,  or  a  voice  to  whisper  comfort  in 
his  misery ;  angel,  that  badst  depart  for  ever  the 
glories  of  thy  own  bridal  day,  lest  he  that  had  shared 
thy  nursery  in  childhood,  should  want  the  honors  of  a 
funeral ;  idolatrous,  yet  Christian  Lady,  that  in  the 
spirit  of  martyrdom  trodst  alone  the  yawning  billows 
of  the  grave,  flying  from  earthly  hopes,  lest  everlast- 
ing despair  should  settle  upon  the  grave  of  thy  brother,' 
&c.  In  fact,  though  all  the  groupings,  and  what  I 
would  call  permanent  attitudes  of  the  Grecian  stage, 
are  majestic,  there  is  none  that,  to  my  mind,  towers 
into  such  aflfecting  grandeur,  as  this  final  revelation, 
through  Antigone  herself,  and  through  her  own  dread- 
ful death,  of  the  tremendous  wo  that  destiny  had  sus- 
pended over  her  house.  If  therefore  my  business  had 
been  chiefly  with  the  individual  drama,  I  should  have 
found  little  room  for  any  sentiment  but  that  of  pro- 
found admiration.  But  my  present  business  is  difler- 
ent :  it  concerns  the  Greek  drama  generally,  and  the 
attempt  to  revive  it ;  and  its  object  is  to  elucidate, 
rather  than  to  praise  or  to  blame.  To  explain  this 
better,  I  will  describe  two  things :  —  1st,  The  sort 
of  audience  that  I  suppose  myself  to  be  addressing ; 
and,  2dly,  As  growing  out  of  ihat^  the  particular 
Huality  of  the  explanations  which  I  wish  to  make. 
1st,  As  to  the  audience :  in  order  to  excuse  the  tone 


82  THE   ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

(which  occasionally  I  may  be  obliged  to  assume)  of 
one  speaking  as  from  a  station  of  knowledge,  to  others 
having  no  knowledge,  I  beg  it  to  be  understood,  that  I 
take  ihat  station  deliberately,  on  no  conceit  of  supe- 
riority to  my  readers,  but  as  a  companion  adapting  my 
services  to  the  wants  of  those  who  need  them.  I  am 
not  addressing  those  already  familiar  with  the  Greek 
drama,  but  those  who  frankly  confess,  and  (according 
to  their  conjectural  appreciation  of  it)  who  regret  their 
non-familiarity  with  that  drama.  It  is  a  thing  well 
known  to  publishers,  through  remarkable  results,  and 
is  now  showing  itself  on  a  scale  continually  widening, 
that  a  new  literary  public  has  arisen,  very  different 
from  any  which  existed  at  the  beginning  of  this  cen- 
tury. The  aristocracy  of  the  land  have  always  been, 
in  a  moderate  degree,  literary ;  less,  however,  in  con- 
nection with  the  current  literature,  than  with  literature 
generally  —  past  as  well  as  present.  And  this  is  a 
tendency  naturally  favored  and  strengthened  in  them, 
by  the  fine  collections  of  books,  carried  forward  through 
successive  generations,  which  are  so  often  found  as  a 
sort  of  hereditary  foundation  in  the  country  mansions 
of  our  nobility.  But  a  class  of  readers,  prodigiously 
more  extensive,  has  formed  itself  within  the  com- 
mercial orders  of  our  great  cities  and  manufacturing 
districts.  These  orders  range  through  a  large  scale 
The  highest  classes  amongst  them  were  always  literary. 
But  the  interest  of  literature  has  now  swept  downwards 
through  a  vast  compass  of  descents :  and  this  large 
body,  though  the  busiest  in  the  nation,  yet,  by  having 
under  their  undisturbed  command  such  leisure  time  as 
they  have  at  all  under  their  command,  are  eventually 
*ble  to  read  more  than  those  even  who  seem  to  ha'"  e 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOOLES.         33 

nothing  else  but  leisure.  In  justice,  however,  to  the 
nobilit)'^  of  our  land,  it  should  be  remembered,  that 
their  stations  in  society,  and  their  wealth,  their  terri- 
torial duties,  and  their  various  public  duties  in  London, 
as  at  court,  at  public  meetings,  in  parliament,  &c., 
bring  crowded  claims  upon  their  time ;  whilst  even 
sacrifices  of  time  to  the  graceful  courtesies  of  life,  are  in 
reference  to  their  stations,  a  sort  of  secondary  duties. 
These  allowances  made,  it  still  remains  true  that  the 
busier  classes  are  the  main  reading  classes;  whilst 
from  their  immense  numbers,  they  are  becoming  ef- 
fectually the  body  that  will  more  and  more  impress 
upon  the  moving  literature  its  main  impulse  and  di- 
rection. One  other  feature  of  difference  there  is 
amongst  this  commercial  class  of  readers :  amongst 
the  aristocracy  all  are  thoroughly  educated,  excepting 
those  who  go  at  an  early  age  into  the  army ;  of  the 
commercial  body,  none  receive  an  elaborate,  and  what 
is  meant  by  a  liberal  education,  except  those  standing 
by  their  connections  in  the  richest  classes.  Thus  it 
happens  that,  amongst  those  who  have  not  inherited 
but  achieved  their  stations,  many  men  of  fine  and 
powerful  understandings,  accomplished  in*  manners, 
and  admirably  informed,  not  having  had  the  bene- 
fits when  young  of  a  regular  classical  education,  find 
(upon  any  accident  bringing  up  such  subjects)  a  de- 
ficiency which  they  do  not  find  on  other  subjects. 
They  are  too  honorable  to  undervalue  advantages, 
which  they  feel  to  be  considerable,  simply  because 
they  were  denied  to  themselves.  They  regret  their 
loss.  And  yet  it  seems  hardly  worth  while,  on  a 
simple  prospect  of  contingencies  that  may  never  be 
realized,  to  undertake  an  entirely  new  course  of  study 
3 


54  THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES. 

for  redressing  this  loss.  But  they  would  be  glad  to 
avail  themselves  of  any  useful  information  not  exa<5t- 
ing  study.  These  are  the  persons,  this  is  the  class,  to 
which  I  address  my  remarks  on  the  '  Antigone ; '  and 
out  of  their  particular  situation,  suggesting  upon  all 
elevated  subjects  a  corresponding  tone  of  liberal  curi- 
osity, will  arise  the  particular  nature  and  direction  of 
these  remarks. 

Accordingly,  I  presume,  secondly,  that  this  curiosity 
will  take   the   following  course:  —  these   persons  will 
naturally   wish    to   know,   at   starting,   what   there   is 
differentially  interesting  in  a  Grecian  tragedy,  as  con- 
trasted with  one  of  Shakspeare's  or  of  Schiller's  :   in 
what  respect,  and  by  what  agencies,  a  Greek  tragedy 
affects  us,  or  is  meant  to  affect  us,  otherwise  than  as 
they  do ;  and   how  far  the  Antigone  of  Sophocles  was 
judiciously  chosen  as  the  particular  medium  for  con- 
veying to  British  minds  a  first  impression,  and  a  repre- 
sentative impression,  of  Greek  tragedy.     So   far,  in 
relation  to  the  ends  proposed,  and  the  means  selected. 
Finally,  these  persons  will  be  curious  to  know  the  issue 
of  such  an  experiment.     Let  the    purposes   and   the 
means  have  been  bad  or  good,  what  was  the  actual 
success  ?     And  not   merely  success,  in  the  sense  of 
>,he  momentary  acceptance  by  half  a  dozen  audiences 
whom  the  mere  decencies  of  justice  must  have  com 
pe-Ued    to   acknowledge    the    manager's    trouble   and 
expense  on  their  behalf;  but  what  was  the  degree  of 
satisfaction  felt  by  students  of  the  Athenian  ^  tragedy 
in  relation  to  their  long-cherished  ideal .?     Did  the  re- 
Dresentation  succeed  in  realizing,  for  a  moment,  the 
awful  pageant  of  the  Athenian  stage  ?     Did  Tragedy 
m  Milton's  immortal  expression, 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES.  36 

come  sweeping  by 

In  soeptred  pall  ? 

Or  was  the  whole,  though  successful  in  relation  to  the 
thing  attempted,  a  failure  in  relation  to  what  ought 
to  have  been  attempted  ?  Such  are  the  questions  to 
be  answered. 

The  first  elementaiy  iaea  of  a  Greek  tragedy,  is 
to  be  sought  in  a  serious  Italian  opera.  The  Greek 
dialogue  is  represented  by  the  recitative,  and  the 
tumultuous  lyrical  parts  assigned  chiefly,  though  not 
exclusively,  to  the  chorus  on  the  Greek  stage,  are 
represented  by  the  impassioned  airs,  duos,  trios,  cho- 
ruses, (fee.  on  the  Italian.  And  here,  at  the  very  outset, 
occurs  a  question  which  lies  at  the  threshold  of  a  Fine 
Art,  — that  is,  of  any  Fine  Art:  for  had  the  views  of 
Addison  upon  the  Italian  opera  had  the  least  foundation 
in  truth,  there  could  have  been  no  room  or  opening 
for  any  mode  of  imitation  except  such  as  belongs  to  a 
mechanic  art. 

The  reason  for  at  all  connecting  Addison  with  this 
case  is,  that  lie  chiefly  was  the  person  occupied  in 
assailing  the  Italian  opera;  and  this  hostility  arose, 
probably,  in  his  want  of  sensibility  to  good  (that  is,  to 
Italian)  music.  But  whatever  might  be  his  motive  for 
the  hostility,  the  single  argument  by  which  he  sup- 
ported it  was  this,  —  that  a  hero  ought  not  to  sing 
upon  the  stage,  because  no  hero  known  to  historj'  ever 
summoned  a  garrison  in  a  song,  or  charged  a  battery 
in  a  semichorus.  In  this  argument  lies  an  ignorance 
of  the  very  first  prmciple  concerned  in  every  Fine 
Art.  In  all  alike,  more  or  less  directly,  the  object  is  \ 
to  reproduce  in  the  mind  some   great  eflfect,  through 


86  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

the  agency  of  idem  in  alio.  The  idem,  the  same  im- 
pression, is  to  be  restored  ;  but  in  alio,  in  a  different 
material,  —  by  means  of  some  different  instrument. 
For  instance,  on  the  Roman  stage  there  was  an  art, 
now  entirely  lost,  of  narrating,  and,  in  part  of  dramati- 
cally representing  an  impassioned  tale,  by  means  of 
dancing,  of  musical  accompaniment  in  the  orchestra, 
and  of  elaborate  pantomime  in  the  performer.  Saltavit 
Hypermnestram,  he  danced  (that  is,  he  represented  by 
dancing  and  pantomime  the  story  of)  Hypermnestra, 
Now,  suppose  a  man  to  object,  that  young  ladies, 
when  saving  their  youthful  husbands  at  midnight  from 
assassination,  could  not  be  capable  of  waltzing  or 
quadrilling,  how  wide  is  this  of  the  whole  problem ! 
This  is  still  seeking  for  the  mechanic  imitation,  some 
imitation  founded  in  the  very  fact ;  whereas  the  object 
is  to  seek  the  imitation  in  the  sameness  of  the  im- 
pression drawn  from  a  different,  or  even  from  an 
impossible  fact.  If  a  man,  taking  a  hint  from  the 
Roman  '  Saltatio'  {saltavit  Andromachen),  should  say 
that  he  would  '  whistle  Waterloo,'  that  is,  by  whistling 
tonnected  with  pantomime,  would  express  the  passion 
and  the  changes  of  Waterloo,  it  would  be  monstrous  to 
refuse  him  his  postulate  on  the  pretence  that  '  people 
did  not  whistle  at  Waterloo.'  Precisely  so :  neither 
are  most  people  made  of  marble,  but  of  a  material  as 
different  as  can  well  be  imagined,  viz.  of  elastic  flesh, 
with  warm  blood  coursing  along  its  tubef  ;  and  yet, 
for  all  that,  a  sculptor  will  draw  tears  from  you,  by 
exhibiting,  in  pure  statuary  marble,  on  a  sepulchral 
monument,  two  young  children  with  their  little  heads 
on  a  pillow,  sleeping  in  each  other's  arms ;  whereas, 
I  he  had  presented  them  in  wax-work,  which  yet  is 


THE   ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  37 

far  more  like  to  flesh,  you  would  have  felt  little  more 
pathos  in  the  scene  than  if  they  had  been  sho\vn  baked 
in  gilt  gingerbread.  He  has  expressed  the  idem,  the 
identical  thing  expressed  in  the  real  children;  the 
sleep  that  masks  death,  the  rest,  the  peace,  the 
purit}--,  the  innocence ;  but  in  alio,  in  a  substance 
the  most  different;  rigid,  non-elastic,  and  as  unlike  to 
flesh,  if  tried  by  touch,  or  eye,  or  by  experience  of 
hfe,  as  can  well  be  imagined.  So  of  the  whistling.  It 
is  the  very  worst  objection  in  the  world  to  say,  that 
the  strife  of  Waterloo  did  not  reveal  itself  through 
whistling  :  undoubtedly  it  did  not ;  but  that  is  the  very 
ground  of  the  man's  art.  He  will  reproduce  the  fuiy 
and  the  movement  as  to  the  only  point  which  concerns 
you,  viz.  the  effect,  upon  your  own  sympathies,  through 
a  language  that  seems  without  any  relation  to  it :  he 
will  set  before  you  what  was  at  Waterloo  through  that 
which  was  not  at  Waterloo.  Whereas  any  direct 
factual  imitation,  resting  upon  painted  figures  drest  up 
in  regimentals,  and  worked  by  watchwork  through  the 
whole  movements  of  the  battle,  would  have  been  no 
art  whatsoever  in  the  sense  of  a  Fine  Art,  but  a  base 
mechanic  mimicry. 

This  principle  of  the  idem  in  alio,  so  widely  diffused 
through  all  the  higher  revelations  of  art,  it  is  peculiarly 
requisite  to  bear  in  mind  when  looking  at  Grecian 
tragedy,  because  no  form  of  human  composition  em- 
ploys it  in  so  much  complexity.  How  confounding  it 
would  have  been  to  Addison,  if  somebody  had  told 
him,  that,  substantially,  he  had  himself  committed  the 
offence  (as  he  fancied  it)  which  he  charged  so  bitterly 
upon  the  Italian  opera ;  and  that,  if  the  opera  had  gone 
farther  upon  that  road  than  himself,  the  Greek  tragedy, 


88  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

which  he  presumed  to  be  so  prodigiously  exalted  be- 
yond modern  approaches,  had  gone  farther  even  than 
the  opera.  Addison  himself,  when  writing  a  tragedy, 
made  this  violation  (as  he  would  have  said)  of  nature, 
made  this  concession  (as  I  should  say)  to  a  higher 
nature,  that  he  compelled  his  characters  to  talk  in 
metre.  It  is  true  this  metre  was  the  common  iambic, 
which  (as  Aristotle  remarks)  is  the  most  natural  and 
spontaneous  of  all  metres ;  and,  for  a  sufficient  reason, 
in  all  languages.  Certainly ;  but  Aristotle  never 
meant  to  say  that  it  was  natural  for  a  gentleman  in  a 
passion  to  talk  threescore  and  ten  iambics  consecu- 
tively :  a  chance  line  might  escape  him  once  and 
away ;  as  we  know  that  Tacitus  opened  one  of  his 
works  by  a  regular  dactylic  hexameter  in  full  curl, 
without  ever  discovering  it  to  his  dying  day  (a  fact 
which  is  clear  from  his  never  having  corrected  it) ; 
and  this  being  a  very  artificial  metre,  a  fortiori  Tacitus 
might  have  slipped  into  a  simple  iambics  But  that 
was  an  accident,  whilst  Addison  had  deliberately  and 
uniformly  made  his  characters  talk  in  verse.  Accord- 
ing to  the  common  and  false  meaning  [which  was  hia 
own  meaning]  of  the  word  nature,  he  had  as  undeniably 
violated  the  principle  of  the  natural,  by  this  metrical 
dialogue,  as  the  Italian  opera  by  musical  dialogue.  If 
it  is  hard  and  trying  for  men  to  sing  their  emotions, 
not  less  so  it  must  be  to  deliver  them  in  verse. 

But,  if  this  were  shocking,  how  much  more  shocking 
ivould  it  have  seemed  to  Addison,  had  he  been  intro- 
duced to  parts  which  really  exist  in  the  Grecian  drama? 
Even  Sophocles,  who,  of  the  three  tragic  poets  sur- 
fiving  from  the  wrecks  of  the  Athenian  stage,  ia 
leputod  the   supreme  artist, ^'^  if  not  the  most  impa* 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  39 

sio^ied  poet  with  wtiat  horror  he  would  have  over- 
whahned  Addison,  when  read  by  the  light  of  those 
principles  which  he  had  himself  so  scornfully  applied 
to  the  opera !  In  the  very  monsoon  of  his  raving 
misery,  from  calamities  as  sudden  as  they  were  irre- 
deemable, a  king  is  introduced,  not  only  conversing, 
but  conversing  in  metre  ;  not  only  in  metre,  but  in  the 
most  elaborate  of  choral  metres ;  not  only  under  the 
torture  of  these  lyric  difficulties,  but  also  chanting ; 
not  only  chanting,  but  also  in  all  probability  dancing. 
What  do  you  think  of  that^  Mr.  Addison  ? 

There  is,  in  fact,  a  scale  of  graduated  ascents  in 
ttvese  artifices  for  unrealizing  the  effects  of  dramatic 
situations : 

1.  We  may  see,  even  in  novels  and  prose  comedies, 
a  keen  attention  paid  to  the  inspiriting  and  dressing  of 
the  dialogue  :  it  is  meant  to  be  life-like,  but  still  it  is  a 
little  raised,  pointed,  colored,  and  idealized. 

2.  In  comedy  of  a  higher  and  more  poetic  cast,  we 
find  the  dialogue  metrical. 

3.  In  comedy  or  in  tragedy  alike,  which  is  meant  to 
be  still  further  removed  from  ordinary  life,  we  find  the 
dialogue  fettered  not  only  by  metre,  but  by  rhyme. 
We  need  not  go  to  Dryden,  and  others,  of  our  own 
middle  stage,  or  to  the  French  stage  for  th,is :  even  in 
Shakspeare,  as  for  example,  in  parts  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet  (and  for  no  capricious  purpose),  we  may  see 
effects  sought  from  the  vse  of  rhyme.  There  is  another 
illustration  of  the  idealizing  effect  to  be  obtained  from 
a  particular  treatment  of  the  dialogue,  seen  in  the 
Hamle:  of  Shakspeare.  In  that  drama  there  arises  a 
necessity  for  exhibiting  a  play  within  a  play.  This 
interior   drama   is   tc>   be    further   removed   from   the 


40         THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES. 

spectator  than  the  principal  drama  ;  it  is  a  deep  below 
a  deep ;  and,  to  produce  that  effect,  the  poet  relies 
chiefly  upon  the  stiffening  the  dialogue,  and  removing 
it  still  farther,  than  the  genei'al  dialogue  of  the  in- 
cluding or  outside  drama,  from  the  standard  of  ordi- 
nary life. 

4.  We  find,  superadded  to  these  artifices  for  ideal- 
izing the  situations,  even  music  of  an  intermitting 
character,  sometimes  less,  sometimes  more  impas- 
sioned—  recitatives,  airs,  choruses.  Here  we  have 
reached  the  Italian  opera. 

5.  And,  finally,  besides  all  these  resources  of  art, 
we  find  dancing  introduced  ;  but  dancing  of  a  solemn, 
mystical,  and  symbolic  character.  Here,  at  last,  we 
have  reached  the  Greek  tragedy.  Probably  the  best 
exemplification  of  a  Grecian  tragedy  that  ever  will  be 
given  to  a  modern  reader  is  found  in  the  Samson 
Agonistes  of  Milton.  Now,  in  the  choral  or  lyric  parts 
of  this  fine  drama,  Samson  not  only  talks,  1st,  metri- 
cally (as  he  does  every  where,  and  in  the  most  level 
parts  of  the  scenic  business),  but,  2d,  in  very  intricate 
metres,  and,  Sd,  occasionally  in  rhymed  metres  (though 
the  rhymes  are  too  sparingly  and  too  capriciously  scat- 
tered by  Milton),  and,  4th,  singing  or  chanting  these 
metres  (for,  as  the  chorus  sang,  it  was  impossible  that 
he  could  be  allowed  to  talk  in  his  ordinary  voice,  else 
he  would  have  put  them  out,  and  ruined  the  music). 
Finally,  5th,  I  am  satisfied  that  Milton  meant  him  to 
dance.  The  office  of  the  chorus  was  imperfectly  de- 
fined upon  the  Greek  stage.  They  are  generally 
understood  to  be  the  moralizers  of  the  scene.  But  this 
js  liable  to  exceptions.  Some  of  them  have  been 
known  to  do  very  bad  things  on  the  stage,  and  to  come 


THE   ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES  41 

within  a  trifle  of  felony :  as  to  misprision  of  felony, 
if  there  is  such  a  crime,  a  Greek  chorus  thinks  nothing 
of  it.  But  that  is  no  business  of  mine.  What  1  was 
going  to  say  is,  that,  as  the  chorus  sometimes  inter- 
mingles too  much  in  the  action,  so  the  actors  some- 
times intermingle  in  the  business  of  the  chorus.  Now, 
when  you  are  at  Rome,  you  must  do  as  they  do  at 
Rome.  And  that  the  actor,  who  mixed  with  the 
chorus,  was  compelled  to  sing,  is  a  clear  case  ;  for  his 
part  in  the  choral  ode  is  always  in  the  nature  of  an 
echo,  or  answer,  or  like  an  antiphony  in  cathedral  ser- 
vices. But  nothing  could  be  more  absurd  than  that 
one  of  these  antiphonies  sliould  be  sung,  and  another 
said.  That  he  was  also  compelled  to  dance,  I  am 
satisfied.  The  chorus  only  sometimes  moralized,  but  it 
always  danced :  and  any  actor,  mingling  whh  the 
chorus,  must  dance  also.  A  little  incident  occurs  to 
my  remembrance,  from  the  Moscow  expedition  of  1812, 
which  may  here  be  used  as  an  illustration  :  One  day 
King  Murat,  flourishing  his  plumage  as  usual,  made  a 
gesture  of  invitation  to  some  squadrons  of  cavalry  that 
they  should  charge  the  enemy  :  upon  which  the  cavalry 
advanced,  but  maliciously  contrived  to  envelope  th< 
king  of  dandies,  before  he  had  time  to  execute  hir 
ordinary  manoeuvre  of  riding  off  to  the  left  and  be- 
coming a  spectator  of  their  prowess.  The  cavalry 
resolved  that  his  majesty  should  for  once  ride  down  at 
their  head  to  the  melee,  and  taste  what  fighting  waa 
like ;  and  he,  finding  that  the  thing  must  be,  though 
horribly  vexed,  made  a  merit  of  his  necessity,  and 
afterwards  pretended  that  he  liked  it  very  much. 
Sometimes,  in  the  darkness,  in  default  of  other  mis- 
Withrojiic  visions,  the  wickedness  of  this  cavalry,  theil 


42  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLLS. 

mechancete,  causes  me  to  laugh  immoderately.  Now 
I  conceive  that  any  interloper  into  the  Greek  chorug 
must  have  danced  when  they  danced,  or  he  would  have 
been  swept  away  by  their  impetus :  nolens  volens,  he 
must  have  rode  along  with  the  orchestral  charge,  he 
must  have  rode  on  the  crest  of  the  choral  billows,  or 
he  would  have  been  rode  down  by  their  impassioned 
sweep.  Samson,  and  CEdipus,  and  others,  must  have 
danced,  if  they  sang ;  and  they  certainly  did  sing,  by 
notoriously  intermingling  in  the  choral  business." 

'  But  now,'  says  the  plain  English  reader,  '  what  was 
the  object  of  all  these  elaborate  devices  ?  And  how 
came  it  that  the  English  tragedy,  which  surely  is  as 
good  as  the  Greek,'  (and  at  this  point  a  devil  of  de- 
fiance whispers  to  him,  like  the  quarrelsome  servant 
of  the  Capulets  or  the  Montagus,  'say  better,'^)  'that 
the  English  tragedy  contented  itself  with  fewer  of  these 
artful  resources  than  the  Athenian  ? '  I  reply,  that 
the  object  of  all  these  things  was  —  to  unrealize  the 
scene.  The  English  drama,  by  its  metrical  dress,  and 
by  other  arts  more  disguised,  unrealized  itself,  liberated 
itself  from  the  oppression  of  life  in  its  ordinary  stand- 
ards, up  to  a  certain  height.  Why  it  did  not  rise  still 
higher,  and  why  the  Grecian  did,  T  will  endeavor  to 
explain.  It  was  not  that  the  English  tragedy  was  less 
impassioned  ;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  far  more  so  ;  the 
Greek  being  awful  rather  than  impassioned ;  but  the 
passion  of  each  is  in  a  different  key.  It  is  not  again 
that  the  Greek  drama  sought  a  lower  object  than  the 
English :  it  sought  a  different  object.  It  is  not  im- 
Tjarity,  but  disparity,  that  divides  the  two  magnificeni 
theatres. 

Suffer  me,  reader  at  this  pomt,  to  borrow  frona  my 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  4ft 

self,  and  do  not  betray  me  to  the  authorities  that  rule  in 
this  journal,  if  you  happen  to  know  [which  is  not 
likely]  that  I  am  taking  an  idea  from  a  paper  which 
years  ago  I  wrote  for  an  eminent  literary  journal.  As 
I  have  no  copy  of  that  paper  before  me,  it  is  impos- 
sible that  I  should  save  myself  any  labor  of  writing. 
The  words  at  any  rate  I  must  invent  afresh :  and  as 
to  the  idea,  you  never  can  be  such  a  churlish  man  as, 
by  insisting  on  a  new  one,  in  effect  to  insist  upon  my 
writing  a  false  one.  In  the  following  paragraph,  there* 
fore,  I  give  the  substance  of  a  thought  suggested  by 
myself  some  years  ago. 

That  kind  of  feeling,  which  broods  over  the  Grecian 
tragedy,  and  to  court  which  feeling  the  tragic  poets 
of  Greece  naturally  spread  all  their  canvas,  was  more 
nearly  allied  to  the  atmosphere  of  death  than  that  of 
life.  This  expresses  rudely  the  character  of  awe  and 
religious  horror  investing  the  Greek  theatre.  But  to 
my  own  feeling  the  different  principle  of  passion  which 
governs  the  Grecian  conception  of  tragedy,  as  com- 
pared with  the  English,  is  best  conveyed  by  saying 
that  the  Grecian  is  a  breathing  from  the  world  of 
sculpture,  the  English  a  breathing  from  the  world 
of  painting.  What  we  read  in  sculpture  is  not  abso- 
lutely death,  but  still  less  is  it  the  fulness  of  life.  We 
read  there  the  abstraction  of  a  life  that  reposes,  the 
sublimity  of  a  life  that  aspires,  the  solemnity  of  a  life 
that  is  thrown  to  an  infinite  distance.  This  last  is  the 
feature  of  sculpture  which  seems  most  characteristic : 
the  form  which  presides  in  the  most  commanding 
groups,  '  is  not  dead  but  sleepeth  : '  true,  but  it  is  the 
«!leep  of  a  life  sequestrated,  solemn,  liberated  from  the 
Jjonds  of  space  and  time,  and  (as  to  both  alike)  thrown 


44         THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES. 

(I  repeat  the  words)  to  a  distance  which  is  infinite.  It 
affects  us  profoundly,  but  not  by  agitation.  Now,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  breathing  life  —  life  kindling, 
trembling,  palpitating  —  that  life  which  speaks  to  us 
in  painting,  this  is  also  the  life  that  speaks  to  us  in 
English  tragedy.  Into  an  English  tragedy  ev^en  fes- 
tivals of  joy  may  enter ;  marriages,  and  baptisms,  OJ 
commemorations  of  national  trophies :  which,  or  any 
thing  like  which,  is  incompatible  with  the  very  being 
of  the  Greek.  In  that  tragedy  what  uniformity  of 
gloom ;  in  the  English  what  light  alternating  with 
depths  of  darkness !  The  Greek,  how  mournful ;  the 
English,  how  tumultuous !  Even  the  catastrophes  how 
different !  In  the  Greek  we  see  a  breathless  waiting 
for  a  doom  that  cannot  be  evaded ;  a  waiting,  as  il 
were,  for  the  last  shock  of  an  earthquake,  or  the  inex- 
orable rising  of  a  deluge  :  in  the  English  it  is  like  a 
midnight  of  shipwreck,  from  which  up  to  the  last  and 
till  the  final  ruin  comes,  there  still  survives  the  sort  of 
hope  that  clings  to  human  energies. 

Connected  with  this  original  awfulness  of  the  Greek 
tragedy,  and  possibly  in  part  its  cause,  or  at  least 
lending  strength  to  its  cause,  we  may  next  remark  the 
grand  dimensions  of  the  ancient  theatres.  Every 
citizen  had  a  right  to  accommodation.  There  at  once 
was  a  pledge  of  grandeur.  Out  of  this  original  stand- 
ard grew  the  magnificence  of  many  a  future  amphi- 
theatre, circus,  hippodrome.  Had  the  original  theatre 
been  merely  a  speculation  of  private  interest,  then, 
exactly  as  demand  arose,  a  corresponding  supply  would 
have  provided  for  it  through  its  ordinary  vulgar  chan- 
nels ;  and  this  supply  would  have  taken  place  through 
rival  theatres.     But  the  crushing  exaction  of  '  room  for 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES.         45 

tvery  citizen,'  put  an  end  to  that  process  of  subdivision. 
Drui-y  Lane,  as  1  read  (or  think  that  I  read)  thirty 
years  ago,  allowed  sitting  room  for  three  thousand 
eight  hundred  people.  Multiply  that  by  ten  ;  imagine 
thirty-eight  thousand  instead  of  thirty-eight  hundred, 
and  then  you  have  an  idea  of  the  Athenian  theatre.^ 

Next,  out  of  that  grandeur  in  the  architectural  pro- 
portions arose,  as  by  necessity,  other  grandeurs.  You 
are  aware  of  the  cothurnus,  or  buskin,  which  raised 
the  actoi''s  heel  by  two  and  a  half  inches ;  and  you 
think  that  this  must  have  caused  a  deformity  in  the 
general  figure  as  incommensurate  to  this  height.  Not 
at  all.     The  flowing  dress  of  Greece  healed  all  that. 

But,  besides  the  cothurnus,  you  have  heard  of  the 
mask.  So  far  as  it  was  fitted  to  swell  the  intona- 
tions of  the  voice,  you  are  of  opinion  that  this  mask 
would  be  a  happy  contrivance  ;  for  what,  you  say, 
could  a  common  human  voice  avail  against  the  vast 
radiation  from  the  actor's  centre  of  more  than  three 
myriads  ?  If,  indeed  (like  the  Homeric  Stentor),  an 
actor  spoke  in  point  of  loudness,  6aov  uTlXol  ntvTr^xoiTa,  £i3 
much  as  other  fifty,  then  he  might  become  audible  to 
the  assembled  Athenians  without  aid.  But  this  bfing 
impossible,  art  must  be  invoked ;  and  well  if  the 
mask,  together  with  contrivances  of  another  class, 
could  correct  it.  Yet  if  it  could,  still  you  think  that 
this  mask  would  bring  along  with  it  an  overbalancing 
evil.  For  the  expression,  the  fluctuating  expression, 
tf  the  features,  the  play  of  the  muscles,  the  music  of 
the  eye  and  of  the  lips,  —  aids  to  acting  that,  in  our 
times,  have  given  immortality  to  scores,  whither  would 
those  have  vanished  ?  Reader,  it  mortifies  me  that 
all  which  I  said  to  you  upon  the  peculiar  and  separate 


i6         THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES 

grandeur  investing  the  Greek  theatre  is  forgonen. 
For,  you  must  consider,  that  where  a  theatre  is  built 
for  receiving  upwards  of  thirty  thousand  spectators,  the 
curve  described  by  what  in  modern  times  you  would 
3all  the  tiers  of  boxes,  must  be  so  vast  as  to  make  the 
ordinaiy  scale  of  human  features  almost  ridiculous  by 
disproportion.  Seat  yourself  at  this  day  in  the  amphi- 
theatre at  VerDna,  and  judge  for  yourself.  In  an 
amphitheatre,  the  stage,  or  properly  the  arena,  occupy- 
ing, in  fact,  the  place  of  our  modern  pit,  was  much 
nearer  than  in  a  scenic  theatre  to  the  surrounding 
spectators.  Allow  for  this,  and  placing  some  adult  in 
a  station  expressing  the  distance  of  the  Athenian  stage, 
then  judge  by  his  appearance  if  the  delicate  pencilling 
of  Grecian  features  could  have  told  at  the  Grecian  dis- 
tance. But  even  if  it  could,  then  I  say  that  this  cir- 
cumstantiality would  have  been  hostile  to  the  general 
tendencies  (as  already  indicated)  of  the  Grecian 
drama.  The  sweeping  movement  of  the  Attic  tragedy 
ought  not  to  admit  of  interruption  from  distinct  human 
features ;  the  expression  of  an  eye,  the  loveliness  of  a 
smile,  ought  to  be  lost  amongst  effects  so  colossal. 
The  mask  aggrandized  the  features :  even  so  far  it 
acted  favorably.  Then  figure  to  yourself  this  mask 
presenting  an  idealized  face  of  the  noblest  Grecian 
outline,  moulded  by  some  skilful  artist  Phidiaca  manu, 
so  as  to  have  the  effect  of  a  marble  bust ;  this  accorded 
with  the  aspiring  cothurnus ;  and  the  motionless  char- 
acter impressed  upon  the  features,  the  marble  tran- 
quillity,  would  (I  contend)  suit  the  solemn  processional 
character  of  Athenian  tragedy,  far  better  than  the  most 
expressive  and  flexible  countenance  on  its  natural 
icale.     '  Yes,'  you  say,  on  considering  the  character 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES.         47 

of  ihe  Greek  drama,  'generally  it  might;  in  forty- 
nine  cases  suppose  out  of  fifty :  but  what  shall  be  done 
in  the  fiftieth,  where  some  dreadful  discoveiy  or  anag- 
norisis  {i.  e.  recognition  of  identity)  takes  place  within 
the  oompass  of  a  single  line  or  two ;  as,  for  instance, 
in  ths  CEdipus  Tyrannus,  at  the  moment  when  CEdipus 
by  a  final  question  of  his  own,  extorts  his  first  fatal 
discoveiy,  viz.  that  he  had  been  himself  unconsciously 
the  murderer  of  Laius  }  '  True,  he  has  no  reason  as 
yet  to  suspect  that  Laius  was  his  own  father ;  which 
discovery,  when  made  further  on,  will  draw  with  it 
another  still  more  dreadful,  viz.  that  by  this  parricide 
he  had  opened  his  road  to  a  throne,  and  to  a  marriage 
with  his  father's  widow,  who  was  also  his  own  natural 
mother.  He  does  not  yet  know  the  worst :  and  to 
have  killed  an  arrogant  prince,  would  not  in  those  days 
have  seemed  a  very  deep  offence  :  but  then  he  believes 
that  the  pestilence  had  been  sent  as  a  secret  vengeance 
for  this  assassination,  which  is  thus  invested  with  a 
mysterious  character  of  horror.  Just  at  this  point, 
Jocasta,  his  mother  and  his  wife,  says,^^  on  witnessing 
the  sudden  revulsion  of  feeling  in  his  face,  '  I  shudder, 
oh  king,  Avhen  looking  on  thy  countenance.'  Now,  in 
what  way  could  this  passing  spasm  of  horror  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  unchanging  expression  in  the  marble- 
looking  mask  ?  This,  and  similar  cases  to  this, 
must  surely  be  felt  to  argue  a  defect  in  the  scenic 
apparatus.  But  I  say,  no :  first,  Because  the  general 
indistinctiveness  from  distance  is  a  benefit  that  applies 
equally  to  the  fugitive  changes  of  the  features  and  to 
their  permanent  expression.  You  need  not  regret  the 
foss  through  absence,  of  an  appearance  that  would 
equally,  though  present,  have  been  lost  through  dis' 


18  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

tance.  Secondly,  The  Greek  actor  had  always  the 
resource,  under  such  difficulties,  of  averting  his  face; 
a  resource  sanctioned  in  similar  cases  by  the  greatest 
of  the  Greek  painters.  Thirdly,  The  voluminous 
draperies  of  the  scenic  dresses,  and  generally  of  the 
Greek  costume,  made  it  an  easy  thing  to  muffle  the 
features  altogether  by  a  gesture  most  natural  to  sudden 
horror.  Fourthly,  We  must  consider  that  there  were 
no  stage  lights :  but,  on  the  contrary  that  the  general 
light  of  day  was  specially  mitigated  for  that  particular 
part  of  the  theatre  ;  just  as  various  architectural  devices 
were  employed  to  swell  the  volume  of  sound.  Finally, 
[  repeat  my  sincere  opinion,  that  the  general  indis- 
tinctness of  the  expression  was,  on  principles  of  taste, 
an  advantage,  as  harmonizing  with  the  stately  and 
sullen  monotony  of  the  Greek  tragedy.  Grandeur  in 
the  attitudes,  in  the  gestures,  in  the  groups,  in  the  pro- 
cessions—  all  this  was  indispensable:  but,  on  so  vast 
a  scale  as  the  mighty  cartoons  of  the  Greek  stage,  an 
Attic  artist  as  little  regarded  the  details  of  physiognomy, 
as  a  great  architect  would  regard,  on  the  frontispiece 
of  a  temple,  the  miniature  enrichments  that  might  be 
suitable  in  a  drawing-room. 

With  these  views  upon  the  Grecian  theatre,  and 
other  views  that  it  might  oppress  the  reader  to  dwell 
upon  in  this  place,  suddenly  in  December  last  an  op- 
portunity dawned  —  a  golden  opportunity,  gleaming 
for  a  moment  amongst  thick  clouds  of  impossibility 
that  had  gathered  through  three-and-twenty  centuries  — 
for  seeing  a  Grecian  tragedy  presented  on  a  British 
Btage,  and  with  the  nearest  approach  possible  to  the 
beauty  of  those  Athenian  pomps  which  Sophocles 
which  Phidias,  which  Pericles  created,  beautified,  pro 


THE  ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  49 

moted.  I  protest,  when  seeing  the  Edinburgh  theatre's 
wogramnie^  that  a  note  dated  from  the  Vatican  would 
not  have  startled  me  more,  though  sealed  with  the  seal 
of  the  fisherman,  and  requesting  the  favor  of  my  com- 
pany to  take  coffee  with  the  Pope.  Nay,  less :  for 
channels  there  were  through  which  I  might  have  com- 
passed a  presentation  to  his  Holiness  ;  but  the  daughter 
of  CEdipus,  the  holy  Antigone,  could  I  have  hoped  to 
see  her  '  in  the  flesh  ? '  This  tragedy  in  an  English 
version,^*  and  with  German  music,  had  first  been 
placed  before  the  eyes  and  ears  of  our  countrymen  at 
Convent  Garden  during  the  winter  of  1844-5.  It  was 
said  to  have  succeeded.  And  soon  after  a  report 
sprang  up,  from  nobody  knew  where,  that  Mr.  Murray 
meant  to  reproduce  it  in  Edinburgh. 

What  more  natural  ?  Connected  so  nearly  with  the 
noblest  house  of  scenic  artists  that  ever  shook  the 
hearts  of  nations,  nobler  than  ever  raised  undying 
echoes  amidst  the  mighty  walls  of  Athens,  of  Rome, 
of  Paris,  of  London,  —  himself  a  man  of  talents  almost 
uriparalleled  for  versatility,  —  why  should  not  Mr. 
Murray,  always  so  liberal  in  an  age  so  ungrateful  to 
his  profession,  have  sacrificed  something  to  this  occa- 
sion }  He,  that  sacrifices  so  much,  why  not  sacrifice 
to  the  grandeur  of  the  Antique  }  I  was  then  in  Edin- 
Lurgh,  or  in  its  neighborhood  ;  and  one  morning,  at  a 
casual  assembly  of  some  literary  friends,  present  Pro- 
fessor Wilson,  Messrs.  J.  F.,  C.  N.,  L.  C,  and  others, 
advocates,  scholars,  lovers  of  classical  literature,  we 
proposed  two  resolutions,  of  which  the  first  was,  that 
the  news  was  too  good  to  be  true.  That  passed  nem, 
ion. ;  and  the  second  resoiution  was  nearly  passing 
viz.  that  a  judgment  would  certainly  fall  upon  Mr 
4 


50  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

Murray,  had  a  second  report  proved  true,  viz.  that  not 
the  Antigone,  but  a  burlesque  on  the  Antigone,  was 
what  he  meditated  to  introduce.  This  turned  out 
false ;  ^^  the  original  report  was  suddenly  revived  eight 
or  ten  months  after.  Immediately  on  the  heels  of  the 
promise  the  execution  followed  ;  and  on  the  last  (which 
I  believe  was  the  seventh)  representation  of  the  An- 
tigone,  I  prepared  myself  to  attend. 

It  had  been  generally  reported  as  characteristic  of 
myself,  that  in  respect  to  all  coaches,  steamboats,  rail- 
roads, wedding-parties,  baptisms,  and  so  forth,  there 
was  a  fatal  necessity  of  my  being  a  trifle  too  late. 
Some  malicious  fairy,  not  invited  to  my  own  baptism, 
was  supposed  to  have  endowed  me  with  this  infirmity. 
It  occurred  to  me  that  for  once  in  my  life  I  would  show 
the  scandalousness  of  such  a  belief  by  being  a  trifle 
too  soon,  say,  three  minutes.  And  no  name  more 
lovely  for  inaugurating  such  a  change,  no  memory 
with  which  I  could  more  willingly  connect  any  re- 
formation, than  thine,  dear,  noble  Antigone  !  Accoi'd- 
ingly,  because  a  certain  man  (whose  name  is  down  in 
my  pocket-book  for  no  good)  had  told  me  that  the 
doors  of  the  theatre  opened  at  half-past  six,  whereas, 
in  fact,  they  opened  at  seven,  there  was  I,  if  you 
please,  freezing  in  the  little  colonnade  of  the  theatre 
precisely  as  it  wanted  six-and-a-half  minutes  to  seven, — 
six-and-a-half  minutes  observe  too  soon.  Upon  which 
ihis  son  of  absurdity  coolly  remarked,  that,  if  he  had 
not  set  me  half-an-hour  forward,  by  my  own  showing, 
I  should  have  been  twenty-three-and-a-half  minutes  too 
late.  What  sophistry  !  But  thus  it  happened  (namely 
through  the  wickedness  of  this  man),  that,  upon  enter 
ing  the  theatre,  I  found  myself  like  Alexander  Selkirk 


THE    ANTI30NE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  51 

in  a  frightful  solitude,  or  like  a  single  family  of  Arabs 
gathering  at  sunset  about  a  solitary  coffee-pot  in  the 
boundless  desert.  Was  there  an  echo  raised  ?  it  was 
from  my  own  steps.  Did  any  body  cough  ?  it  was 
too  evidently  myself.  1  was  the  audience ;  I  was  the 
public.  And,  if  any  accident  happened  to  the  theatre, 
such  as  being  burned  down,  Mr.  Murray  would  cer- 
tainly lay  the  blame  upon  me.  My  business  meantime, 
as  a  critic,  was  —  to  find  out  the  most  malicious  seat, 
i.  e.  the  seat  from  which  all  things  would  take  the  most 
unfavorable  aspect.  I  could  not  suit  myself  in  this 
respect ;  however  bad  a  situation  might  seem,  I  still 
fancied  some  other  as  promising  to  be  worse.  And  I 
was  not  sorry  when  an  audience,  by  mustering  in 
strength  through  all  parts  of  the  house,  began  to  divide 
my  responsibility  as  to  burning  down  the  building,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  to  limit  the  caprices  of  my  distracted 
choice.  At  last,  and  precisely  at  half-past  seven,  the 
curtain  drew  up  ;  a  thing  not  strictly  correct  on  a 
Grecian  stage.  But  in  theatres,  as  in  other  places, 
one  must  forget  and  forgive.  Then  the  music  began, 
of  which  in  a  moment.  The  overture  slipped  out  at 
one  ear,  as  it  entered  the  other,  which,  with  submission 
to  Mr.  Mendelssohn,  is  a  proof  that  it  must  be  horribly 
bad  ;  for,  if  ever  there  lived  a  man  that  in  music  can 
neither  forget  nor  forgive,  that  man  is  myself.  What- 
ever is  very  good  never  perishes  from  my  remem- 
brance,—  that  is,  sounds  in  my  ears  by  intervals  for 
ever,  —  and  for  whatever  is  bad,  I  consign  the  author, 
in  my  wrath,  to  his  own  consience,  and  to  the  tortures 
of  his  own  discords.  The  most  villanous  things,  how- 
ever, have  one  merit ;  they  are  transitory  as  the  best 
tilings;  and  that  was  true  of  the  overture  :  it  perished. 


52  THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLEb. 

Then,  suddenly,  —  oh,  heavens  !  what  a  revelation  of 
beauty!  —  forth  stepped,  walking  in  brightness,  the 
most  faultless  of  Grecian  marbles.  Miss  Helen  Faucit 
as  Antigone.  What  perfection  of  Athenian  sculpture  ! 
the  noble  figure,  the  lovely  arms,  the  fluent  drapery  I 
What  an  unveiling  of  the  ideal  statuesque  !  Is  it  Hebe  ? 
is  it  Aurora  ?  is  it  a  goddess  that  moves  before  us  ? 
Perfect  she  is  in  form  ;  perfect  in  attitude  ; 

*  Beautiful  exceedingly. 
Like  a  ladie  from  a  far  countrie.' 

Here  was  the  redeeming  jewel  of  the  performance.  It 
flattered  one's  patriotic  feelings,  to  see  this  noble  young 
countrywoman  realizing  so  exquisitely,  and  restoring 
to  our  imaginations,  the  noblest  of  Grecian  girls.  We 
critics,  dispersed  through  the  house,  in  the  very  teeth 
of  duty  and  conscience,  all  at  one  moment  unanimously 
fell  in  love  with  Miss  Faucit.  We  felt  in  our  remorse, 
and  did  not  pretend  to  deny,  that  our  duty  was  —  to  be 
savage.  But  when  was  the  voice  of  duty  listened  to 
in  the  first  uproars  of  passion  ?  One  thing  I  regretted, 
viz.  that  from  the  indistinctness  of  my  sight  for  distant 
faces,  I  could  not  accurately  discriminate  Miss  Faucit's 
features ;  but  I  was  told  by  my  next  neighbor  that  they 
were  as  true  to  the  antique  as  her  figure.  Miss  Faucit'a 
voice  is  fine  and  impassioned,  being  deep  for  a  female 
voice ;  but  in  this  organ  lay  also  the  only  blemish  of 
her  personation.  In  her  last  scene,  which  is  injudi- 
ciously managed  by  the  Greek  poet,  —  too  long  by 
much,  and  perhaps  misconceived  in  the  modern  way 
of  understanding  it,  —  her  voice  grew  too  husky  to 
execute  the  cadences  of  the  intonations :  yet,  even  in 
ihis  scene,  her  fall  to  the  ground,  under  the  burden  of 


THE   ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  63 

her  farewell  anguish,  was  in  a  high  degree  sculptui- 
esque  through  the  whole  succession  of  its  stages. 

Antigone  in  the  written  drama,  and  still  more  in  the 
personated  drama,  draws  all  thoughts  so  entirely  to 
herself,  as  to  leave  little  leisure  for  examining  the 
other  parts  ;  and,  under  such  circumstances,  the  first 
impulse  of  a  critic's  mind  is,  that  he  ought  to  massacre 
all  the  rest  indiscriminately ;  it  being  clearly  his  duty 
to  presume  every  thing  bad  which  he  is  not  unwillingly 
forced  to  confess  good,  or  concerning  which  he  retains 
no  distinct  recollection.  But  I,  after  the  first  glory  of 
Antigone's  avatar  had  subsided,  applied  myself  to  con- 
sider the  general  'setting'  of  this  Theban  jewel. 
Creon,  whom  the  Greek  tragic  poets  take  delight  in 
describing  as  a  villain,  has  very  little  more  to  do  (until 
his  own  turn  comes  for  grieving),  than  to  tell  Antigone, 
by  minute-guns,  that  die  she  must.  '  Well,  uncle, 
don't  say  that  so  often,'  is  the  answer  which,  secretly, 
the  audience  whispers  to  Antigone.  Our  uncle  grows 
tedious ;  and  one  wishes  at  last  that  he  himself  could 
be  '  put  up  the  spout.'  Mr.  Glover,  from  the  sepulchral 
depth  of  his  voice,  gave  efiect  to  the  odious  Creontic 
menaces  ;  and,  in  the  final  lamentations  over  the  dead 
body  of  Hsemon,  being  a  man  of  considerable  intel- 
lectual power,  Mr.  Glover  drew  the  part  into  a  promi- 
nence which  it  is  the  fault  of  Sophocles  to  have 
authorized  in  that  situation ;  for  the  closing  sympathies 
of  the  spectator  ought  not  to  be  diverted,  for  a  moment, 
from  Antigone. 

But  the  chorus,  how  did  they  play  their  part  }  Mainly 
their  part  must  have  always  depended  on  the  character 
of  the  music :  even  at  Athens,  that  must  have  been 
Xery  much  the  case,  and  at  Edinburgh  altogether,  be- 


54  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

cause  dancing  on  the  Edinburgh  stage  there  was  none. 
How  came  that  about  ?  For  the  very  word. '  orchestral,' 
suggests  to  a  Greek  ear  dancings  as  the  leading  ele- 
ment in  the  choral  functions.  Was  it  because  dancing 
with  us  is  never  used  mystically  and  symbolically, 
never  used  in  our  religious  services?  Still  it  would 
have  been  possible  to  invent  solemn  and  intricate 
dances,  that  might  have  appeared  abundantly  signifi- 
cant, if  expounded  by  impassioned  music.  But  that 
music  of  Mendelssohn !  —  like  it  I  cannot.  Say  not 
that  Mendelssohn  is  a  great  composer.  He  is  so.  But 
here  he  was  voluntarily  abandoning  the  resources  of 
his  own  genius,  and  the  support  of  his  divine  art,  in 
quest  of  a  chimera:  that  is,  in  quest  of  a  thing  called 
Greek  music,  which  for  us  seems  far  more  irrecover- 
able than  the  '  Greek  fire.'  I  myself,  from  an  early 
date,  was  a  student  of  this  subject.  I  read  book  after 
book  upon  it ;  and  each  successive  book  sank  me 
lower  into  darkness,  until  I  had  so  vastly  improved  in 
ignorance,  that  I  could  myself  have  written  a  quarto 
upon  it,  which  all  the  world  should  not  have  found  it 
possible  to  understand.  It  should  have  taken  three 
men  to  construe  one  sentence.  I  confess,  however,  to 
not  having  yet  seen  the  writings  upon  this  impractica- 
ble theme  of  Colonel  Perronet  Thompson.  To  write 
experimental  music  for  choruses  that  are  to  support  the 
else  meagre  outline  of  a  Greek  tragedy,  will  not  do. 
Let  experiments  be  tried  upon  worthless  subjects  ;  and 
if  this  of  Mendelssohn's  be  Greek  music,  the  sooner  it 
takes  itself  off  the  better.  Sophocles  will  be  delivered 
from  an  incubus,  and  we  from  an  affliction  of  the  audi- 
tory nerves. 
It  strikes  me  that  1  see  the  source  of  this  musia 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  55 

We,  that  were  learning  German  some  thirty  yeai*s  ago, 
must  remember  the  noise  made  at  that  time  about 
Mendelssohn,  the  Platonic  philosopher.  And  why  ? 
Was  there  any  thing  particular  in  '  Der  Phsedon,'  on 
Ihe  immortality  of  the  soul  ?  Not  at  all ;  it  left  U3 
quite  as  mortal  as  it  found  us ;  and  it  has  long  since 
been  found  mortal  itself.  Its  venerable  remains  are 
still  to  be  met  with  in  many  worm-eaten  trunks,  pasted 
on  the  lids  of  which  1  have  myself  perused  a  matter 
of  thirty  pages,  except  for  a  part  that  had  been  too 
closely  perused  by  worms.  But  the  key  to  all  the 
popularity  of  the  Platonic  Mendelssohn,  is  to  be  sought 
in  the  whimsical  nature  of  German  liberality,  whi-ch, 
in  those  days,  forced  Jews  into  paying  toll  at  the  gates 
of  cities,  under  the  title  of  '  swine,'  but  caressed  their 
infidel  philosophers.  Now,  in  this  category  of  Jew 
and  infidel,  stood  the  author  of  '  Phsedon.'  Fie  was 
certainly  liable  to  toll  as  a  hog ;  but,  on  the  othei 
hand,  he  was  much  admired  as  one  who  despised  the 
Pentateuch.  Now  that  Mendelssohn,  whose  learned 
'abors  lined  our  trunks,  was  the  father  of  this  Men- 
delssohn, whose  Greek  music  afflicts  our  ears.  Nat- 
urally, then,  it  strikes  me,  that  as  '  papa'  Mendelssohn 
attended  the  synagogue  to  save  appearances,  the  filial 
Mendelssohn  would  also  attend  it.  I  likewise  attended 
the  synagogue  now  and  then  at  Liverpool,  and  else- 
where. We  all  three  have  been  cruising  in  the  same 
latitudes ;  and,  trusting  to  my  own  remembrances,  1 
should  pronounce  that  Mendelssohn  has  stolen  his 
Greek  music  from  the  synagogue.  There  was,  in  the 
first  chorus  of  the  '  Antigone,'  one  sublime  ascent  (and 
once  repeated)  that  rang  to  heaven :  it  might  have 
(intered  into  the  music  of  Jubal's  lyre,  or  have  glorified 


56  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

the  timbrel  of  Miriam.  All  the  rest,  tried  by  the  deep 
standard  of  my  own  feeling,  that  clamors  for  the  im- 
passioned in  music,  even  as  the  daughter  of  the  horse- 
leech says,  '  Give,  give,'  is  as  much  without  meaning  as 
most  of  the  Hebrew  chanting  that  I  heard  at  the  Liver- 
pool synagogue.  I  advise  Mr.  Murray,  in  the  event 
of  his  ever  reviving  the  '  Antigone,'  to  make  the  chorus 
sing  the  Hundredth  Psalm,  rather  than  Mendelssohn's 
music  ;  or,  which  would  be  better  still,  to  import  from 
Lancashire  the  Handel  chorus-singers. 

But  then,  again,  whatever  change  in  the  music  were 
made,  so  as  to  '  better  the  condition '  of  the  poor  audi- 
ence, something  should  really  be  done  to  '  better  the 
condition '  of  the  poor  chorus.  Think  of  these  worthy 
men,  in  their  white  and  skyblue  liveries,  kept  standing 
the  whole  evening ;  no  seats  allowed,  no  dancing ;  no 
tobacco  ;  nothing  to  console  them  but  Antigone's  beauty  ; 
and  all  this  in  our  climate,  latitude  fifty-five  degrees, 
30th  of  December,  and  Fahrenheit  groping  about,  1 
don't  pretend  to  know  where,  but  clearly  on  his  road 
down  to  the  wine  cellar.  Mr.  Murray,  I  am  perfectly 
sure,  is  too  liberal  to  have  grudged  the  expense,  if  he 
could  have  found  any  classic  precedent  for  treating  the 
chorus  to  a  barrel  of  ale.  Ale,  he  may  object,  is  an 
unclassical  tipple ;  but  perhaps  not.  Xenophon,  the 
most  Attic  of  prose  writers,  mentions  pointedly  in  hia 
inahasis,  that  the  Ten  Thousand,  when  retreating 
tnrough  snowy  mountains,  and  in  circumstances  very 
like  our  General  Elphinstone's  retreat  from  Cabul, 
came  upon  a  considerable  stock  of  bottled  ale.  To  be 
sure,  the  poor  ignorant  man  calls  it  barley  wine 
[oiioj  y.()iSnoi :]  but  the  flavor  was  found  so  perfectly 
tlassical  that   not  one  man  of  the  ten  thousand,  no 


THE  ANTIGONE  OF  SOPHOCLES.  57 

even  the  Attic  bee  himself,  is  reported  to  have  left 
any  protest  against  it,  or  indeed  to  have  left  much  of 
the  ale. 

But  stop  :  perhaps  I  am  intruding  upon  other  men's 
space.  Speaking,  therefore,  now  finally  to  the  prin- 
cipal question,  How  far  did  this  memorable  experiment 
succeed  ?  I  reply,  that,  in  the  sense  of  realizing  all 
that  the  joint  revivers  proposed  to  realize,  it  succeeded ; 
and  failed  only  where  these  revivers  had  themselves 
failed  to  comprehend  the  magnificent  tendencies  of 
Greek  tragedy,  or  where  the  limitations  of  our  theatres, 
arising  out  of  our  habits  and  social  differences,  had 
made  it  impossible  to  succeed.  In  London,  I  believe 
that  there  are  nearly  thirty  theatres,  and  many  more, 
if  every  place  of  amusement  (not  bearing  the  technical 
name  of  theatre)  were  included.  All  these  must  be 
united  to  compose  a  building  such  as  that  which  re- 
ceived the  vast  audiences,  and  consequently  the  vast 
spectacles,  of  some  ancient  cities.  And  yet,  from  a 
great  mistake  in  our  London  and  Edinburgh  attempts  to 
imitate  the  stage  of  the  Greek  theatres,  little  use  was 
made  of  such  advantages  as  really  zvere  at  our  disposal. 
The  possible  depth  of  the  Edinburgh  stage  was  not 
laid  open.  Instead  of  a  regal  hall  in  Thebes,  I  protest 
I  took  it  for  the  boudoir  of  Antigone.  It  was  painted 
in  light  colors,  an  error  which  was  abominable,  though 
possibly  meant  by  the  artist  (but  quite  unnecessarily) 
fts  a  proper  ground  for  relieving  the  sumptuous  dresses 
of  the  leading  performers.  The  doors  of  entrance  and 
exit  were  most  unhappily  managed.  As  to  the  dresses. 
'^lose  of  Creon,  of  his  queen,  and  of  the  two  loyal 
sisters,  were  good  :  chaste,  and  yet  princely.  Tlie  dress 
%f  the  chorus  was  as  bad  as  bad  as  could  be  :  a  few 


58  THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES. 

Burplices  borrowed  from  Episcopal  chapels,  or  ratliei 
the  ornamented  albes,  &c.  from  any  rich  Roman 
Catholic  establishment,  would  have  been  more  effec 
tive.  The  Coryphceus  himself  seemed,  to  my  eyes,  no 
better  than  a  railway  laborer,  fresh  from  tunnelling  or 
boring,  and  wearing  a  blouse  to  hide  his  working  dress. 
These  ill-used  men  ought  to  '  strike '  for  better  clothes, 
in  case  Antigone  should  again  revisit  the  glimpses 
of  an  Edinburgh  moon ;  and  at  the  same  time  they 
might  mutter  a  hint  about  the  ale.  But  the  great  hin- 
drances to  a  perfect  restoration  of  a  Greek  tragedy, 
lie  in  peculiarities  of  our  theatres  that  cannot  be  re- 
moved, because  bound  up  with  their  purposes.  1 
suppose  that  Salisbury  Plain  would  seem  too  vast  a 
theatre  :  but  at  least  a  cathedral  would  be  required  in 
dimensions,  York  Minster  or  Cologne.  Lamp-light 
gives  to  us  some  advantages  which  the  ancients  had 
not.  But  much  art  would  be  required  to  train  and 
organize  the  lights  and  the  masses  of  superincumbent 
gloom,  that  should  be  such  as  to  allow  no  calculation 
of  the  dimensions  overhead.  Aboriginal  night  should 
brood  over  the  scene,  and  the  sweeping  movements  of 
the  scenic  groups :  bodily  expression  should  be  given 
to  the  obscure  feeling  of  that  dark  power  which  moved 
in  ancient  tragedy  :  and  we  should  be  made  to  know 
why  it  is  that,  with  the  one  exception  of  the  Persce^ 
founded  on  the  second  Persian  invasion,^^  in  which 
iEschylus,  the  author,  was  personally  a  combatant,  ana 
therefore  a  contemporary^  not  one  of  the  thirty-foui 
Greek  tragedies  surviving,  but  recedes  into  the  dusky 
shades  of  the  heroic,  or  even  fabulous  times. 

A  failure,  therefore,  I  think  the  '  Antigone,'  in  rela- 
tion to  an  object  that  for  us  is  unattainable ;    but  a 


THE    ANTIGONE    OF    SOPHOCLES.  59 

failure  worth  more  than  many  ordinary  successes.  We 
aro  all  deeply  indebted  to  Mr.  Murray's  liberality,  in  two 
senses  •  to  his  liberal  interest  in  the  noblest  section  of 
ancient  literature,  and  to  his  liberal  disregard  of  ex- 
pense  To  have  seen  a  Grecian  play  is  a  great 
remembrance.  To  have  seen  Miss  Helen  Faucit's 
Anticrone,  were  that  all,  with  her  bust,  ig  ^yuXuuro^ 
andlier  uplifted  arm  'pleading  against  unjust  tribu- 
nals,'   is   worth  wnat   is   it   worth.?     VA/orth   the 

money?  How  mean  a  thought!  To  see  Helen,  to 
see  Helen  of  Greece,  was  the  chief  prayer  of  Marlow's 
Dr  Faustus ,  the  chief  gift  which  he  exacted  from  the 
fiend.  To  see  Helen  of  Greece  ?  Dr.  Faustus,  we 
have  seen  her:  Mr.  Murray  is  the  Mephistopheles  that 
Bhowed  her  to  us.  It  was  cheap  at  the  price  of  a 
journey  to  Siberia,  and  is  the  next  best  thing  to  havmg 
Been  Waterloo  at  sunset  on  the  18th  of  June,  1815-»« 


HOMER  AND  THE   HOMERIDii:. 


IloMEK,  the  general  patriarch  of  Occidental  litera- 
ture, reminds  us  oftentimes  and  powerfully,  of  the 
river  Nile.  If  you,  reader,  should  (as  easily  you  may) 
be  seated  on  the  banks  of  that  river  in  the  months  of 
February  or  March,  1842,  you  may  count  on  two  lux- 
uries for  a  poetic  eye  —  first,  on  a  lovely  cloudless 
morning  ;  secondly,  on  a  gorgeous  flora.  For  it  has 
been  remarked,  that  nowhere,  out  of  tropical  regions, 
is  the  vernal  equipage  of  nature  so  rich,  so  pompously 
variegated,  in  buds,  and  bells,  and  blossoms,  as  pre- 
cisely in  this  unhappy  Egypt  —  a  '  house  of  bondage  ' 
undeniably,  in  all  ages,  to  its  own  working  population ; 
and  yet,  as  if  to  mock  the  misery  it  witnesses,  the 
gayest  of  all  lands  in  its  spontaneous  flora.  Now,  sup- 
posing your&elf  to  be  seated,  together  with  a  child  or 
two,  on  some  flowery  carpet  of  the  Delta  ;  and  sup- 
posing the  Nile  —  '  that  ancient  river '  —  within  sight ; 
happy  infancy  on  the  one  side,  the  everlasting  pomp 
of  waters  on  the  other ;  and  the  thought  still  intruding, 
that  on  some  quarter  of  your  position,  perhaps  fifty 
miles  out  of  sight,  stand  pointing  to  the  heavens  the 
mysterious  pyramids.  These  circumstances  presup- 
posed, it  is  inevitable  that  your  thoughts  should  wandei 


HOMEE    AXD    TSE     HOMERID^.  61 

upwards  to  the  dark  fountains  of  origination.  The 
pyramids,  why  and  when  did  they  arise  ?  This  in- 
fancy, so  lovely  and  innocent,  whence  does  it  come, 
whither  does  it  go  ?  This  creative  river,  what  are  its 
ultimate  well-heads  ?  That  last  question  was  Adcwed 
by  antiquity  as  charmed  against  solution.  It  was  not 
permitted,  they  fancied,  to  dishonor  the  river  Nile  by 
stealing  upon  his  solitude  in  a  state  of  weakness  and 
childhood  — 

•  Nee  licmt  populis  parvum  te,  Nile,  videre.' 

So  said  Lucan.  And  in  those  days  no  image  that  the 
earth  suggested  could  so  powerfully  express  a  myste- 
rious secrecy,  as  the  coy  fountains  of  the  Nile.  At 
length  came  Abyssinian  Bruce  ;  and  that  superstition 
seemed  to  vanish.  Yet  now  again  the  mystery  has 
revolved  upon  us.  You  have  drunk,  you  say,  from 
the  fountains  of  the  Nile.  Good;  but,  my  friend, 
from  which  fountains?  'Which  king,  Bezonian  ? ' 
Understand  that  there  is  another  branch  of  the  Nile  — 
another  mighty  arm,  whose  fountains  lie  in  far  other 
regions.  The  great  letter  Y,  that  Pythagorean  marvel, 
is  still  covered  with  shades  in  one-half  of  its  bifurca- 
tion. And  the  darkness  which,  from  the  eldest  of 
days,  has  invested  Father  Nile  with  fabulous  awe,  still 
broods  over  his  most  ancient  fountains,  defies  our  cu- 
rious impertinence,  and  will  not  suffer  us  to  behold  the 
Eurvivor  of  Memphis,  and  of  Thebes  —  the  hundred- 
gated  —  other  than  in  his  grandeur  as  a  benefactor  of 
nations. 

Such  thoughts,  a  world  of  meditations  pointing  in 
the  same  direction,  settle  also  upon  Homer.  Eight- 
v^d-twenty  hundred  years,  according  to  the  improved 


62  HOMEK   AND    THE    HOMEKTD^. 

views  of  chronology,  have  men  drunk  from  the  waters 
of  this  earliest  among  poets.  Himself,  under  one  of 
his  denominations,  the  son  of  a  river  [Melesigenes], 
or  the  grandson  of  a  river  [Maeonides],  he  has  been 
the  parent  of  fertilizing  streams  carried  off  derivatively 
into  every  land.  Not  the  fountains  of  the  Nile  have 
been  so  diffusive,  or  so  creative,  as  those  of  Homer  — 

—— '  a  quo  ceu  fonte  perenni, 
Vatum  Pieriis  ora  rigantur  aquis.' 

There  is  the  same  gayety  of  atmosphere,  the  same 
'  blue  rejoicing  sky,'  the  same  absence  of  the  austere 
and  the  gloomy  sublime,  investing  the  Grecian  Homer 
as  invests  the  Nile  of  the  Delta.  And  again,  if  you 
would  go  upwards  to  the  fountains  of  this  ancient  Nile, 
or  of  this  ancient  Homer,  you  would  find  the  same 
mysterious  repulsion.  In  both  cases  you  find  their 
fountains  shyly  retreating  before  you  ;  and  like  the 
sacred  peaks  of  Ararat,  where  the  framework  of  Noah'a 
ark  reposes,  never  less  surmounted  than  when  a  man 
fancies  himself  within  arm's  reach  of  their  central 
recesses.* 

A  great  poet  appearing  in  early  ages,  and  a  great 
river,  bear  something  of  the  same  relation  to  human 
civility  and  culture.  In  this  view,  with  a  peculiar  sub- 
limity, the  Hindoos  consider  a  mighty  fertilizing  river, 

*  Seven  or  eight  Europeans  —  some  Russian,  some  English  — 
have  not  only  taken  possession  of  the  topmost  crag  on  Ararat  by 
means  of  the  broadest  disc  which  their  own  persons  cflered,  but 
have  left  flags  flying,  to  mark  out  for  those  beloWj  the  exact 
Btation  which  they  had  reached.  All  to  no  purpose !  Thi 
bigoted  Armenian  still  replied  —  these  are  mere  illusions 
worked  by  demons. 


HOMER    AND    THE     H0M;ERID^.  63 

when  bursting  away  Avith  torrent  rapture  from  its 
mountain  cradle,  and  billowing  onwards  through  two 
thousand  miles  of  realms  made  rich  by  itself,  as  in 
some  special  meaning  '  the  Son  of  God.'  The  word 
Burrampooter  is  said  to  bear  that  sublime  sense. 
Hence  arose  the  profound  interest  about  the  Nile  : 
what  cause  could  produce  its  annual  swelling  ?  Even 
as  a  phenomenon  that  was  awful,  but  much  more  so  as 
a  creative  agency ;  for  it  was  felt  that  Egypt,  which  is 
but  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  had  been  the  mere  creation 
of  the  river  annually  depositing  its  rich  layers  of  slime. 
Hence  arose  the  corresponding  interest  about  Homer ; 
for  Greece  and  the  Grecian  Isles  were  in  many  moral 
respects  as  much  the  creation  of  Homer  as  Egypt  of 
the  Nile.  And  if,  on  the  one  hand,  it  is  unavoidable 
to  assume  some  degree  of  civilization  before  a  Homer 
could  exist,  on  the  other,  it  is  certain  that  Homer,  by 
the  picture  of  unity  which  he  held  aloft  to  the  Greeks, 
in  making  them  co-operate  to  a  common  enterprise 
against  Asia,  and  by  the  intellectual  pleasure  which  he 
first  engrafted  upon  the  innumerable  festivals  of  Hellas, 
did  more  than  lawgivers  to  propagate  this  eai'ly  civili- 
zation, and  to  protect  it  against  those  barbarizing  feuds 
or  migrations  which  through  some  centuries  menaced 
its  existence. 

HaA-ing,  therefore,  the  same  motive  of  curiosity  — 
having  the  same  awe,  connected  first,  with  secrecy  ; 
secondly,  with  remoteness ;  and  thirdly,  with  benefi- 
cent power,  which  turn  our  inquiries  to  the  infant 
Nile  ;  let  us  pursue  a  parallel  investigation  with  regard 
to  the  infant  Homer.  How  was  Homer  possible  ?  how 
could  such  a  poet  as  Homer  —  how  could  such  a  poem 
«s  the  Iliad  —  anse  in  days  so  illiterate  -^    Or  rather, 


64  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEEIDJS. 

and  first  of  all,  was  Homer  possible?  If  the  Iliad 
could  and  did  arise,  not  as  a  long  series  of  separate 
phenomena,  but  as  one  solitary  birth  of  revolutionary 
power,  how  was  it  preserved  ?  how  passed  onwards 
from  generation  to  generation  ?  how  propagated  over 
Greece  during  centuries,  when  our  modern  facilities 
for  copying  on  paper,  and  the  general  art  of  reading, 
were  too  probably  unknown  ? 

We  presume  every  man  of  letters  to  be  aware,  that, 
since  the  time  of  the  great  German  philologer,  Fred. 
Augustus  Wolf,  (for  whose  life  and  services  to  litera- 
ture, see  Wilhelm  Koerte's  '  Lehen  und  Studien  Friedr. 
Aug.  Wolfs,'  1833,)  a  great  shock  has  been  given  to 
the  slumbering  credulity  of  men  on  these  Homeric 
subjects  ;  a  galvanic  resuscitation  to  the  ancient  scep- 
ticism on  the  mere  possibility  of  an  Iliad,  such  as  we 
now  have  it,  issuing  sound  and  complete,  in  the  tenth 
or  eleventh  century  before  Christ,  from  the  brain  of  a 
blind  man,  who  had  not  {they  say)  so  much  as  chalk 
towards  the  scoring  down  of  his  thoughts.  The  doubts 
moved  by  Wolf  in  1795,  propagated  a  controversy  in 
Germany  which  has  subsisted  down  to  the  present 
time.  This  controversy  concerns  Homer  himself,  and 
bis  first-born  child,  the  Iliad ;  for  as  to  the  Odyssey, 
sometimes  reputed  the  child  of  his  old  age,  and  as  to 
the  minor  poems,  which  never  could  have  been  as- 
cribed to  him  by  philosophic  critics,  these  are  univer- 
sally given  up  —  as  having  no  more  connection  with 
Homer  personally  than  any  other  of  the  many  epic 
and  cyclical  poems  which  arose  during  Post-Homeric 
ages,  in  a  spirit  of  imitation,  more  or  less  diverging 
from  the  primitive  Homeric  model. 

Fred.  Wolf  raised  the  question  soon  after  the  time 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  65 

of  the  French  Revolution.  Afterwards  he  pursued  it 
[1797]  in  his  letters  to  Heyne.  But  it  is  remarkable 
that  a  man  so  powerful  in  scholarship,  witnessiiTg  the 
universal  fermentation  he  had  caused,  should  not  have 
responded  to  the  general  call  upon  himself  to  come 
forward  and  close  the  dispute  with  a  comprehensivt 
valuation  of  all  that  had  been  said,  and  all  that  yet 
remained  to  be  said,  upon  this  difficult  problem.  Voss, 
the  celebrated  ti-auslator  of  Homer  into  German  dac- 
tylic hexameters,  was  naturally  interested  by  a  kind  of 
personal  stake  in  the  controversy.  He  wrote  to  Wolf 
—  warmly,  perhaps,  and  in  a  tone  almost  of  moral  re- 
monstrance ;  but  without  losing  his  temper,  or  forget- 
ting the  urbanity  of  a  scholar.  '  I  believe,'  said  he  in 
his  later  correspondence  of  the  year  1796,  '  I  believe 
in  one  Iliad,  in  one  Odyssey,  and  in  one  Homer  as  the 
sole  father  of  both.  Grant  that  Homer  could  not  write 
his  own  name  —  and  so  much  I  will  concede  that  your 
acute  arguments  have  almost  demonstrated  —  still  to 
my  thinking  that  only  enhances  the  glory  of  the  poet. 
The  unity  of  this  poet,  and  the  unity  of  his  works,  are 
as  yet  to  m.e  unshaken  ideas.  But  what  then  ?  I  am 
no  bigot  in  my  creed,  so  as  to  close  my  ears  against 
all  hostile  arguments.  And  these  arguments,  let  me 
Bay  plainly,  you  now  owe  to  us  all ;  arguments  dra-\vp 
from  the  internal  structure  of  the  Homeric  poems. 
You  have  wounded  us,  Mr.  Wolf,  in  our  affections  ; 
you  have  affronted  us,  Mr.  Wolf,  in  our  tenderest  sen- 
Bibilities.  But  still  we  are  just  men  ;  ready  to  listen, 
willing  to  hear  and  to  forbear.  Meantime  the  matter 
cannot  rest  here.  You  owe  it,  Mr.  Wolf,  to  the  dignity 
of  the  subject,  not  to  keep  back  those  proofs  which 
doubtless  you  possess ;  prof)fs,  observe,  conclusivo 
5 


66  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID-S;. 

proofs.  For  hitherto,  permit  me  to  say,  you  have 
merely  played  with  the  surface  of  the  question.  True, 
even  that  play  has  led  to  some  important  results  ;  and 
for  these  no  man  is  more  grateful  than  myself.  Bui 
the  main  battle  is  still  in  arrear.' 

Wolf,  however,  hearkened  not  to  such  appeals.  He 
had  called  up  spirits,  by  his  evocation,  more  formi- 
dable than  he  looked  for  or  could  lay.  Perhaps,  like 
the  goddess  Eris  at  the  wedding  feast,  he  had  merely 
sought  to  amuse  himself  by  throwing  a  ball  of  conten- 
tion amongst  the  literati :  a  little  mischief  was  all  he 
contemplated,  and  a  little  learned  Billingsgate.  Things 
had  taken  a  wider  circuit.  Wolf's  acuteness  in  raising 
objections  to  all  the  received  opinions  had  fallen  upon 
a  kindly  soil :  the  public  mind  had  reacted  powerfully  ; 
for  the  German  mind  is  but  too  naturally  disposed  to 
scepticism  ;  and  Wolf  found  himself  at  length  in  this 
dilemma  —  viz,  that  either  by  writing  a  very  inade- 
quate sequel,  he  must  forfeit  the  reputation  he  had 
acquired  ;  or  that  he  must  prepare  himself  for  a  com- 
pass of  research  to  which  his  spirits  were  not  equal, 
and  to  which  his  studies  had  not  latterly  been  directed. 
A  man  of  high  celebrity  may  be  willing  to  come  for- 
ward in  undress,  and  to  throw  out  such  casual  thoiiglits 
as  the  occasion  may  prompt,  provided  he  can  preserve 
his  incognito  ;  but  if  he  sees  a  vast  public  waiting  to 
receive  him  with  theatric  honors,  and  a  flourish  of 
trumpets  announcing  his  approach,  reasonably  he  may 
shrink  from  facing  expectations  so  highly  raised,  and 
may  perhaps  truly  plead  an  absolute  impossibility  of 
pursuing  further  any  question  under  such  origina' 
sterility  of  materials,  and  after  so  elaborate  a  cultiva 
tion  by  other  laborers. 


HOMEB   AND    THE    HOMEEID-S.  67 

Wolf,  therefore,  is  not  to  be  blamed  foi  ha\mg 
leclined,  in  its  mature  stages,  to  patronize  his  own 
question.  His  own  we  call  it,  because  he  first  pressed 
its  strongest  points  ;  because  he  first  kindled  it  into  a 
public  feud ;  and  because,  by  his  matchless  revisal  of 
the  Homeric  text,  he  gave  to  the  world,  simultaneously 
with  his  doubts,  the  very  strongest  credentials  of  his 
own  right  to  utter  doubts.  And  the  public,  during  the 
forty-six  years'  interval  which  has  succeeded  to  his  first 
opening  of  the  case,  have  viewed  the  question  as  so 
exclusively  his,  that  it  is  generally  known  under  the 
name  of  the  "VVolfian  hypothesis.  All  this  is  fair  and 
natural ;  that  rebel  who  heads  the  mob  of  insurgents  is 
rightly  viewed  as  the  father  of  the  insurrection.  Yet 
still,  in  the  rigor  of  justice,  we  must  not  overlook  the 
earlier  conspirators.  Not  to  speak  here  of  more  ancient 
sceptics,  it  is  certain  that  in  modern  times  Bentley, 
something  more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  back, 
with  his  usual  divinity  of  eye,  saw  the  opening  for 
doubts.  Already  in  the  year  1689,  when  he  was  a 
young  man  fresh  from  college,  Bentley  gave  utterance 
to  several  of  the  Wolfian  scruples.  And,  indeed,  had 
he  done  nothing  more  than  call  attention  to  the  di- 
gamma,  as  applied  to  the  text  of  Homer,  he  could  not 
have  escaped  feeling  and  communicating  these  scruples. 
To  a  man  who  was  one  day  speaking  of  some  supposed 
hiatus  in  the  Iliad,  Bentley,  from  whom  courtesy  flowed 
as  naturally  as  '  milk  from  a  male  tiger,'  called  out  — 
'  Hiatus,  man  !  Hiatus  in  your  throat  !  There  is  no 
such  thing  in  Homer.'  And,  when  the  other  had 
timidly  submitted  to  him  such  cases  as  ^ityu  tmvjv  or 
xala  tpya,  or  fieXitjSfu  oiior,  Bentley  showed  him  that, 
unless  where  the  final  syllable  of  the  prior  word  hap- 


t8  HOMEB    AND    THE    HOMEBID-ffi!. 

pened  to  be  in  arsi,  (as  suppose  in  nijhjtaSiw  ^x'^i°?') 
universally  the  hiatus  had  not  existed  to  the  ears  of 
Homer.  And  why  ?  Because  it  was  cured  by  the 
interposition  of  the  digamma  :  '  Apud  Homerum  saepe 
videtur  hiatus  esse,  ubi  prisca  littera  digamma  ex- 
plebat  inter  medium  spatium.'  Thus  fisXnjdea  oivov 
in  Homer's  age  was  fuXnjdiu  Fonov  (from  which  ^olic 
form  is  derived  our  modern  word  for  wine  in  all  the 
western  and  central  languages  of  Christendom  ;  F  is 
V,  and  V  is  W  all  the  world  over  —  whence  vin,  wine, 
vino,  wein,  wiin,  and  so  on ;  all  originally  depending 
upon  that  ^oliac  letter  F,  which  is  so  necessary  to  the 
metrical  integrity  of  Homer.)  Now,  when  once  a 
man  of  Bentley's  sagacity  had  made  that  step  —  forc- 
ing him  to  perceive  that  here  had  been  people  of  old 
time  tampering  with  Homer's  text,  (else  how  had  the 
digamma  dropped  out  of  the  place  which  once  it  must 
have  occupied,)  he  could  not  but  go  a  little  further. 
If  you  see  one  or  two  of  the  indorsements  on  a  bill 
misspelt,  you  begin  to  suspect  general  forgery.  When 
the  text  of  Homer  had  once  become  frozen  and  settled, 
no  man  could  take  liberties  Avith  it  at  the  risk  of  being 
tripped  up  himself  on  its  glassy  surface,  and  landed 
in  a  lugubrious  sedentary  posture,  to  the  derision  of  all 
critics,  compositors,  pressmen,  devils,  and  devillets. 
But  whilst  the  text  was  yet  piping  hot,  or  lukewarn-i, 
or  in  the  transitional  state  of  cooling,  every  man  who 
had  a  private  purpose  to  serve  might  impress  upon  its 
plastic  wax  whatever  alterations  he  pleased,  whether 
by  direct  addition  or  by  substitution,  provided  only  he 
had  skill  to  evade  any  ugly  seam  or  cicatrice.  It  is 
true  he  could  run  this  adulterated  Homer  only  on  that 
particular  road  to  which  he  happened  to  have  access 


HOMEB   AND    THE    HOMEKID^.  ^^^ 

But  then,  in  after  generations,  when  all  the  Homers 
were  called  in  by  authority  for  general  collation,  his 
would  go  up  with  the  rest ;  his  forgery  would  be  ac- 
cepted for  a  various  reading,  and  would  thus  have  a 
fair  chance  of  coming  down  to  posterity  —  which  word 
means,  at  this  moment,  you,  reader,  and  ourselves. 
We  are  posterity.  Yes,  even  we  have  been  humbugged 
by  this  Pagan  rascal ;  and  have  doubtless  drunk  off 
much  of  his  swipes,  under  the  firm  faith  that  we  were 
drinking  the  pure  fragrant  wine  (the  nt?.n;5ea  Fonor)  of 
Homer. 

Bentley  having  thus  warned  the  public,  by  one  gene- 
ral caveat,  that  tricks  upon  travellers  might  be  looked 
for  on  this  road,  was  succeeded  by  Wood,  who,  in  his 
Essay  on  the  Genius  of  Homer,  occasionally  threw  up 
rockets  in  the  same  direction.  This  essay  first  crept 
out  in  the  j'ear  1769,  but  only  to  the  extent  of  seven 
copies  ;  and  it  was  not  until  the  year  1775,*  that  a 
second  edition  diffused  the  new  views  freely  amongst 
the  world.  The  next  memorable  era  for  this  question 
occurred  in  1788,  during  which  year  it  was  that  Vil- 
loison  published  his  Iliad  ;  and,  as  part  of  its  appara- 
tus, he  printed  the  famous  Venetian  Scholia,  hitherto 
known  only  to  inspectors  of  MSS.  These  Scholia 
gave  strength  to  the  modern  doubts,  by  showing  that 
many  of  them  were  but  ancient  doubts  in  a  new  form. 
Still,  as  the  worshipful  Scholiasts  do  not  offer  the  pleas- 

*  It  is  a  proof,  however,  of  the  interest,  even  at  that  time, 
taken  by  Germany  in  English  literature,  as  ■well  as  of  the  in- 
terest taken  in  this  Homeric  question,  that  one  of  the  seven  copies 
oublished  in  1769  must  have  found  its  way  to  some  German 
fccholar;  for  ah-eady,  in  1773,  a  German  translation  of  Wood 
had  been  published  at  Frankfort. 


70  HOMEE    AND   THE    HOMEKID^. 

antest  reading  in  tlie  world,  most  of  them  being  rather 
drowsy  or  so  —  truly  respectable  men,  but  somewhat 
apoplectic  —  it  could  not  be  expected  that  any  explosion 
of  sympathy  should  follow  :  the  clouds  thickened  ;  but 
the  man  who  Avas  to  draw  forth  the  lightnings  from 
their  surcharged  volumes,  had  not  yet  come  forward. 
In  the  meantime,  Herder,  not  so  much  by  learning  as 
by  the  sagacity  of  his  genius,  threw  out  some  pregnant 
hints  of  the  disputable  points.  And  finally,  in  1795, 
Wolf  marched  forth  in  complete  mail,  a  sheaf  of 
sceptical  arrows  rattling  on  his  harness,  all  of  which  he 
pointed  and  feathered,  giving  by  his  learning,  or  by 
masculine  sense,  buoyancy  to  their  flight,  so  as  to  carry 
them  into  every  corner  of  literary  Europe.  Then 
began  the  '  row  '  —  then  the  steam  was  mounted  which 
has  never  since  subsided  —  and  then  opened  upon 
Germany  a  career  of  scepticism,  which  from  the  very 
first  promised  to  be  contagious.  It  was  a  mode  of 
revolutionary  disease,  which  could  not  by  its  very 
nature  confine  itself  to  Homer.  The  religious  reader 
has  since  had  occasion  to  see,  with  pain,  the  same 
principles  of  audacious  scepticism  applied  to  books  and 
questions  far  more  important ;  but,  as  might  be  shown 
upon  a  fitting  occasion,  with  no  reason  whatever  for 
serious  anxiety  as  to  any  popular  eff"ect.  Meantime, 
for  those  numerous  persons  who  do  not  read  Latin  or 
German  with  fluency,  but  are  familiar  with  French,  the 
best  comprehensive  view  of  Wolf's  arguments,  (as 
given  in  his  Homeric  Prolegomena,  or  subsequently  in 
kia  Brief e  an  Heyne,)  is  to  be  found  in  Franeeson's 
Essai  sur  la  question  —  Si  Homere  a  connu  Vusage  de 
V^criture.     Berlin,  1818. 

This  French  work  we  mention,  as  meeting  the  wanta 


HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  71 

of  those  who  simply  wish  to  know  how  the  feud  began. 
But,  as  that  represents  only  the  early  stages  of  the  en- 
tire speculation,  it  will  be  more  satisfactory  for  all  who 
are  seriously  interested  in  Homer,  and  ^vithout  parti- 
sanship seek  to  know  the  plain  unvarnished  truths 
'  Is  Homer  a  hum,  and  the  Iliad  a  hoax  ?  ' —  to  consult 
the  various  papers  on  this  subject  which  have  been  con- 
tributed by  Nitzsch  to  the  great  Allgemeine  Encyclo- 
pcBdie  of  modern  Germany.  Nitzsch's  name  is  against 
him ;  it  is  intolerable  to  see  such  a  thicket  of  conso- 
nants Avith  but  one  little  bit  of  a  vowel  amongst  them  • 
it  is  like  the  proportions  between  Falstaff 's  bread  and 
his  sack.  However,  after  all,  the  man  did  not  make 
his  own  name,  and  the  name  looks  worse  than  it  sounds, 
for  it  is  but  our  own  word  niche,  barbarously  written. 
This  man's  essays  are  certainly  the  most  full  and  rep- 
resentative pleadings  which  this  extensive  question  has 
produced.  On  the  other  hand,  they  labor  in  excess 
with  the  prevailing  vices  of  German  speculation  ;  \iz. 
1st,  vague  indeterminate  conception  ;  2dly,  total  want 
of  power  to  methodize  or  combine  the  parts,  and  in- 
deed generally  a  barbarian  inaptitude  for  composition. 
But,  waiving  our  quarrel  with  Nitzsch  and  with 
Nitzsch's  name,  no  work  of  his  can  be  considered  as 
generally  accessible  ;  his  body  is  not  in  court,  and,  if 
it  were,  it  talks  German.  So,  in  his  chair  we  shall 
seat  ourselves  ;  and  now,  with  one  advantage  over 
him  —  viz.  that  we  shall  never  leave  the  reader  to 
muse  for  an  hour  over  our  meaning  —  we  propose  to 
state  the  outline  of  the  controversy  ;  to  report  the  de- 
cisions upon  the  several  issues  sent  down  for  trial  upon 
Jhis  complex  suit;  and  the  apparent  tendencies,  so  far 
as  they  are  yet  discoverable,  towards  that  kind  of  gen- 


72  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEBID^. 

eral  judgment  which  must  be  delivered  by  the  Chan* 
eery  of  European  criticism,  before  this  dispute  will 
subside  into  repose. 

The  great  sectional  or  subordinate  points  into  which 
the  Homeric  controversy  breaks  up,  are  these  :  — 

I.  Homer  —  that  is,  the  poet  as  distinct  from  his 
works. 

II.  The  Hiad  and  the  Odyssey  —  that  is,  the  poems 
as  distinct  from  their  author. 

III.  The  Rhapsodoi,  or  poetic  chanters  of  Greece ; 
these,  and  their  predecessors  or  their  contemporaries 
—  the  Aoidoi,  the  Citharcedi,  the  HomeridcB. 

TV.  Lyciirgus. 

V.  Solon  —  and  the  Pisistratidse. 

VI.  The  DiascenastcB. 

We  hardly  know  at  what  point  to  take  up  this 
ravelled  tissue ;  but,  by  way  of  tracing  the  whole  theme 
ab  ovo,  suppose  we  begin  by  stating  the  chronological 
bearings  of  the  principal  objects  (things  as  well  as 
persons)  connected  with  the  Iliad. 

Ilium  was  that  city  of  Asia  Minor,  whose  memorable 
fortunes  and  catastrophe  furnished  the  subject  of  the 
Iliad.  At  what  period  of  human  history  may  we  rea- 
sonably suppose  this  catastrophe  to  have  occurred  ? 
Never  did  a  great  man  err  so  profoundly  as  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  on  this  very  question,  in  deducing  the  early 
chronology  of  Greece.  The  semi-fabulous  section  of 
Grecian  annals  he  crowded  into  so  narrow  a  space, 
and  he  depressed  the  whole  into  such  close  proximity 
to  the  regular  opening  of  history,  (that  is,  to  the  Olym- 
piads,) that  we  are  perfectly  at  a  loss  to  imagine  with 
what  sort  of  men,  events,  and  epochs.  Sir  Isaac  would 
Have   peopled  that  particular   interval  of  a  thousand 


HOMEE   AND    THE    HOMEEID^.  73 

rears  in  Grecian  chronology,  which,  corresponds  to  the 
Bcriptural  interval  between  the  patriarch  Abraham  and 
Solomon,  the  Jewish  king.  This  interval  commences 
with  the  year  2000  before  Christ,  and  terminates  with 
the  year  1000  before  Christ.  But  such  is  the  fury 
of  Sir  Isaac  for  depressing  all  events  not  absolutely 
fabulous  below  this  latter  terminus,  that  he  has  really 
left  himself  without  counters  to  mark  the  progress 
of  man,  or  to  fill  the  cells  of  history,  through  a  millen- 
nium of  Grecian  life.  The  whole  thousand  years, 
as  respects  Hellas,  is  a  mere  desert  upon  Sir  Isaac's 
map  of  time.  As  one  instance  of  Sir  Isaac's  modern- 
izing propensities,  we  never  could  sufficiently  marvel 
at  his  supposing  the  map  of  the  heavens,  including 
those  constellations  which  are  derived  from  the  Argo- 
nautic  enterprise,  to  have  been  completed  about  the 
very  time  of  that  enterprise  :  as  if  it  were  possible  that 
a  coarse,  clumsy  hulk  like  the  ship  Argo,  at  which  no 
possible  Newcastle  collier  but  would  have  sneezed,  or 
that  any  of  the  men  who  navigated  her,  could  take  a 
consecrated  place  in  men's  imagination,  or  could  obtain 
an  everlasting  memorial  in  the  starry  heavens,  until 
time,  by  removing  gross  features,  and  by  blending  all 
the  circumstances  with  the  solemnities  of  vast  distance, 
had  reconciled  the  feelings  to  a  sanctity  which  must 
have  been  shocking,  as  applied  to  things  local  and 
familiar. 

Far  different  from  Sir  Isaac's  is  the  present  chrono- 
logical theory.  Almost  universally  it  is  now  agreed, 
that  the  siege  of  Troy  occurred  about  1300,  or,  at  the 
lowest  calculation,  more  than  1200  years  before  Christ. 
WTiat,  then,  is  the  chronological  relation  of  Homer  to 
Troy  ?     It  is  generally  agreed,  that  the  period  of  his 


74  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

flourisliing  was  from  two  to  three  centuries  after  Troy. 
By  some  it  was  imagined  that  Homer  himself  had  been 
a  Trojan  ;  and  therefore  contemporary  mth  the  very 
heroes  whom  he  exhibits.  Others,  like  our  Jacob  Bry- 
ant, have  fancied  that  he  was  not  merely  coeval  with 
those  heroes,  but  actually  was  one  of  those  heroes  — 
viz.  Ulysses  ;  and  that  the  Odyssey  rehearses  the  per- 
sonal adventures,  the  voyages,  the  calamities  of  Ho- 
mer. It  is  our  old  friend  the  poet,  but  with  a  new 
face ;  he  is  now  a  soldier,  a  sailor,  a  king,  and,  in  case 
of  necessity,  a  very  fair  boxer,  or  '  fistic  artist,'  for  the 
abatement  of  masterful  beggars,  '  sorners,'  or  other 
nuisances.  But  these  wild  fancies  have  found  no  suc- 
cess. All  scholars  have  agreed  in  placing  a  deep  gulf 
of  years  between  Homer  and  the  Ilium  which  he  sang. 
Aristarchus  fixes  the  era  of  Homer  at  140  years  after 
the  Trojan  war;  Philochorus  at  180  years  ;  Apollodo- 
rus  at  240  ;  the  Arundel  Marbles  at  302  ;  and  Herodo- 
tus, who  places  Homer  about  400  years  before  his  own 
time,  {i.  e.  about  850  before  Christ,)  ought,  therefore, 
to  be  interpreted  as  assuming  350  years  at  least  be- 
tween Homer  and  Troy.  So  that  the  earliest  series  of 
events  connected  from  before  and  from  behind  with 
the  Grecian  bard,  may  be  thus  arranged  :  — 

Years  bef.  Christ. 

1220  —  Trojan  expedition. 

1000  —  Homer  a  young  man,  and  contemporary  with 
the  building  of  the  first  temple  at  Jeru- 
salem. 

820  —  Lycurgus  brings  into  the  Peloponnesus  from 
Crete,  (or  else  from  Ionia,)  the  Homeric 
poems,  hitherto  unknown  upon  the  Grecian 
continent. 


HOMEB    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  76 

Up  to  this  epoch,  (the  epoch  of  transplanting  the 
Iliad  from  Greece  insular  and  Greece  colonial  to 
Greece  continental,)  the  Homeric  poems  had  been  left 
to  the  custody  of  two  schools,  or  professional  orders, 
interested  in  the  text  of  these  poems  :  how  interested, 
or  in  what  way  their  duties  connected  them  with  Ho- 
mer, we  will  not  at  this  point  inquire.  Suffice  it,  that 
these  two  separate  orders  of  men  did  confessedly  ex- 
ist ;  one  being  elder,  perhaps,  than  Homer  himself,  or 
even  than  Troy  —  viz.  the  Aoidoi  and  Citharoedi. 
These,  no  doubt,  had  originally  no  more  relation  to 
Homer  than  to  any  other  narrative  poet ;  their  duty  of 
musical  recitation  had  brought  them  connected  with 
Homer,  as  it  woiJd  have  done  with  any  other  popular 
poet ;  and  it  was  only  the  increasing  current  of  Ho- 
mer's predominance  over  all  rival  poets,  which  grad- 
ually gave  such  a  bias  and  inflection  to  these  men's 
professional  art,  as  at  length  to  suck  them  within  the 
great  Homeric  tide  ;  they  became,  but  were  not  origin- 
ally, a  sort  of  Homeric  choir  and  orchestra  —  a  chapel 
of  priests  having  a  ministerial  duty  in  the  vast  Ho- 
meric cathedral.  Through  them  exclusively,  perhaps, 
certainly  through  them  chiefly,  the  two  great  objects 
were  secured  —  fii'st,  that  to  each  separate  generation 
of  men  Homer  was  published  with  all  the  advantages 
of  a  musical  accompaniment ;  secondly,  that  for  dis- 
tant generations  Homer  was  preserved.  We  do  not 
thus  beg  the  question  as  to  the  existence  of  alphabetic 
writing  in  the  days  of  Homer  ;  on  the  contrary,  we  go 
along  with  Nitzsch  and  others  in  opposing  Wolf  upon 
that  point.  We  believe  that  a  laborious  art  of  wri  ting 
iid  exist ;  but  with  such  disadvantages  as  to  writing 
materials,  that  Homer  (we  are  satisfied)  would  have 


76  HOMEa    AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

fared  il  as  regards  his  chance  of  reaching  the  polished 
ages  of  Pericles,  had  he  relied  on  written  memorials, 
or  upon  any  mode  of  publication  less  impassioned  than 
the  orchestral  chanting  of  the  Rhapsodoi.  The  other 
order  of  men  dedicated  to  some  Homeric  interest, 
whatever  that  might  be,  were  those  technically  known 
as  the  HomeridcB.  The  functions  of  these  men  have 
never  been  satisfactorily  ascertained,  or  so  as  to  dis- 
criminate them  broadly  and  firmly  from  the  Citharcedi 
and  Rhapsodoi.  But  in  two  features  it  is  evident  that 
they  differ  essentially  —  first,  that  the  Homeridui 
constituted  a  more  local  and  domestic  college  of  Ho- 
meric ministers,  confined  originally  to  a  single  island, 
not  diffused  (as  were  the  Rhapsodoi)  over  all  Greece ; 
secondly,  that  by  their  very  name,  which  refers  them 
back  to  Homer  as  a  mere  product  from  his  influence, 
this  class  of  followers  is  barred  from  pretending  in  the 
Homeric  equipage,  (like  the  CitharoBdi)  to  any  inde- 
pendent existence,  still  less  to  any  anterior  existence. 
The  musical  reciters  had  been  a  general  class  of  public 
ministers,  gradually  sequestered  into  the  particular 
service  of  Homer ;  but  the  HomeridcB  were,  in  some 
way  or  other,  either  by  blood,  or  by  fiction  of  love  and 
veneration.  Homer's  direct  personal  representatives. 

Thus  far,  however,  though  there  is  evidence  of  two 
separate  colleges  or  incorporations  who  charged  them- 
selves with  the  general  custody,  transmission,  and 
publication  of  the  Homeric  poems,  we  hear  of  no 
care  applied  to  the  periodical  review  of  the  Homeric 
text ;  we  hear  of  no  man  taking  pains  to  qualify 
himself  for  that  office  by  collecting  copies  from  all 
quarters,  or  by  applying  the  supreme  political  author- 
■  ty  to  the  conservation  and  the  authentication  of  the 


HOMER    ANB    THE    HOMEKID-S;.  77 

Homeric  poems.  The  text  of  no  book  can  become 
an  object  of  anxiety,  until  by  numerous  corruptions  it 
has  become  an  object  of  doubt.  Lycurgus,  it  is  true, 
the  Spartan  lawgiver,  did  ajDply  his  own  authority,  in 
a  very  early  age,  to  the  general  purpose  of  importing 
the  Iliad  and  Odyssey.  But  there  his  office  termi- 
nated. Critical  skill,  applied  to  the  investigation  of  an 
author's  text,  was  a  function,  of  the  human  mind  as 
unknown  in  the  Greece  of  Lycurgus  as  in  the  Ger- 
many of  Tacitus,  or  the  Tongataboo  of  Captain  Cook. 
And  of  all  places  in  Greece,  such  delicate  reactions  of 
the  intellect  upon  its  own  creations  were  least  likely 
to  arise  amongst  the  illiterate  Dorial  tribes  of  the 
Southern  Peloponnesus  —  wretches  that  hugged  their 
own  barbarizing  institutions  as  the  very  jewels  of  their 
birthright,  aud  would  most  certainly  have  degenerated 
rapidly  into  African  brutality,  had  they  not  been  held 
steady,  and  forcibly  shouldered  into  social  progress, 
by  the  press  of  surrounding  tribes  more  intellectual 
than  themselves. 

Thus  continued  matters  through  about  four  centuries 
from  Homer.  And  by  that  time  we  begin  to  feel 
anxious  about  the  probable  state  of  the  Homeric  text. 
Not  that  we  suppose  any  interregnum  in  Homer's 
influence  —  not  that  we  believe  in  any  possible  defect 
of  links  in  that  vast  series  of  traditional  transmitters  ; 
the  integrity  of  that  succession  was  guarantied  by 
its  interwreathing  itself  with  human  pleasures,  with 
religious  ceremonies,  with  household  and  national 
festivals.  It  is  not  that  Homer  would  have  become 
ipocryphal  or  obscure  for  want  of  public  repetition ; 
on  the  contrary,  too  constant  and  too  fervent  a  repe- 
tition would  have  been  the  main  source  of  corruptions 


78  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEUIDJE. 

ia  the  text.  Sympathy  in  the  audience  must  alway» 
have  been  a  primary  demand  with  the  Rhapsodoi 
and,  to  perfect  sympathy,  it  is  a  previous  condition  to 
be  perfectly  understood.  Hence,  when  allusions  were 
no  longer  intelligible  or  effectual,  it  might  sometimes 
happen  that  they  would  be  dropped  from  the  text ;  and 
when  any  Homeric  family  or  city  had  become  extinct, 
the  temptation  might  be  powerful  for  substituting  the 
r^mes  of  others  who  could  delight  the  chanter  by 
fervid  gratitude  for  a  distinction  which  had  been 
merited,  or  could  reward  him  with  gifts  for  one 
which  had  not.  But  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  over 
the  many  causes  in  preparation,  after  a  course  of 
four  centuries,  for  gradually  sapping  the  integrity  of 
Homer's  text.  Everybody  will  agree,  that  it  was  at 
length  high  time  to  have  some  edition  '  by  authority  ; ' 
and  that,  had  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  received  no 
freezing  arrest  in  their  licentious  tendency  towards 
a  general  interfusion  of  their  substance  with  modern 
ideas,  most  certainly  by  the  time  of  Alexander,  i.  e. 
about  seven  centuries  from  Homer,  either  poem  would 
have  existed  only  in  fragments.  The  connecting  parts 
between  the  several  books  would  have  dropped  out ; 
and  all  the  a^iaruat,  or  episodes  dedicated  to  the  honor 
of  a  particular  hero,  might,  with  regard  to  names  less 
hallowed  in  the  imagination  of  Greece,  or  where  no 
representatives  of  the  house  remained,  have  perished 
utterly.  It  was  a  real  providential  care  for  the  civili- 
gation  of  Greece,  which  caused  the  era  of  state 
editions  to  supersede  the  ad  libitum  text  of  the  care- 
less or  the  interested,  just  at  that  precise  period  when 
the  rapidly  rising  tide  of  Athenian  refinement  would 
soon  have  swept  away  all  the  landmarks  of  primitive 


HOMEB    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  79 

Greece,  aud  when  the  altered  character  of  the  public 
reciters  would  have  co-operated  with  the  other  diffi- 
culties of  the  case  to  make  a  true  Homeric  text 
irrecoverable.  For  the  Rhapsodoi  were  in  a  regulai 
course  of  degradation  to  the  rank  of  mere  mercenary 
artists,  from  that  of  sacred  minstrels,  who  connected 
the  past  with  the  present,  and  who  sang  —  precisely 
because  their  burthen  of  truth  was  too  solemn  for 
unimpassioned  speech.  This  was  the  station  they  had 
occupied ;  but  it  remains  in  evidence  against  them, 
that  they  were  rapidly  sinking  under  the  changes  of 
the  times  —  were  open  to  tribes,  and,  as  one  con- 
sequence (whilst  partly  it  was  one  cause)  of  this 
degradation,  that  they  had  ceased  to  command  the 
public  respect.  The  very  same  changes,  and  through 
the  very  same  steps,  and  under  the  very  same  agen- 
cies, have  been  since  exhibited  to  Europe  in  the 
parallel  history  of  the  minstrels.  The  pig-headed 
Ritson,  in  mad  pursuit  of  that  single  idea  which 
might  vex  Bishop  Percy,  made  it  his  business,  in  one 
essay,  to  prove,  out  of  the  statutes  at  large,  and  out  of 
local  court  records,  that  the  minstrel,  so  far  from 
being  that  honored  guest  in  the  courts  of  princes 
whom  the  bishop  had  described,  w^as,  in  fact,  a  rogue 
and  a  vagabond  by  act  of  Parliament,  standing  in  awe 
of  that  great  man,  the  parish  beadle,  and  liable  to  be 
kicked  out  of  any  hundred  or  tithing  where  he  should 
be  found  trespassing.  But  what  nonsense  !  the  min- 
strel was,  and  he  was  not,  all  that  the  bishop  and 
others  had  affirmed.  The  contradiction  lay  in  the 
time ;  Percy  and  Ritson  spoke  of  different  periods  ; 
)he  bishop  of  the  twelfth,  thirteenth,  and  fourteenth 
\enturies  —  the  attorney  ^^  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 


80  HOMEB    AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

teenth.  Now  the  Grecian  Rhapsodoi  passed  through 
corresponding  stages  of  declension.  Having  minis- 
tered through  many  centuries  to  advancing  civilization, 
finally  they  themselves  fell  before  a  higher  civiliza- 
tion ;  and  the  particular  aspect  of  the  new  civilization, 
which  proved  fatal  to  them,  was  the  general  diffusion 
of  reading  as  an  art  of  liberal  education.  In  the 
age  of  Pericles,  every  well-educated  man  could  read  ; 
and  one  result  from  his  skill,  as  no  doubt  it  had  also 
been  one  amongst  its  exciting  causes,  was  —  that  he 
had  a  fine  copy  at  home,  beautifully  adorned,  of  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  Paper  and  vellum,  for  the  last 
six  centuries  B.  C.  (that  is,  from  the  era  of  the 
Egyptian  king,  Psammetichus,)  were  much  less  scarce 
in  Greece  than  during  the  ages  immediately  consecu- 
tive to  Homer,  This  fact  has  been  elaborately  proved 
in  recent  German  essays. 

How  providential,  therefore  —  and  with  the  recol- 
lection of  that  great  part  played  by  Greece  in  propa- 
gating Christianity  through  the  previous  propagation  of 
her  own  literature  and  language,  what  is  there  in 
such  an  interference  unworthy  of  Providence  ?  —  how 
providential,  that  precisely  in  that  interval  of  one 
hundred  and  eleven  years,  between  the  year  555 
B.  C.,  the  locus  of  Pisistratus,  and  444  B.  C,  the 
locus  of  Pericles,  whilst  as  yet  the  traditional  text 
of  Homer  was  retrievable,  though  rapidly  nearing 
to  the  time  when  it  would  be  strangled  with  weeds, 
and  whilst  as  yet  the  arts  of  reading  and  writing  had 
not  weakened  the  populai'  devotion  to  Homer  by 
dividing  it  amongst  multiplied  books  ;  just  then  in 
that  critical  isthmus  of  time,  did  two  or  three 
A.thenians  of  rank,  first  Solon,  next  Pisistratus,  and 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOilERID^.  81 

iMtly,  (if  Plato  is  right,)  Hipparch.us,  step  forward  to 
make  a  public,  solemn,  and  legally  operative  review  of 
the  Homeric  poems.  They  drew  the  old  vessel  into 
dock  ;  laid  bare  its  timbers  ;  and  stopped  the  fiu-ther 
progress  of  decay.  What  they  did  more  than  this,  and 
by  what  characteristic  services  each  connected  his 
name  with  a  separate  province  in  this  memorable  res- 
toration of  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  —  we  shall  inquu-e 
further  on. 

One  century  after  Pisistratus  we  come  to  Pericles ; 
or,  counting  from  the  locu^  of  each,  (555  B.  C,  and 
444  B.  C.,)  exactly  one  hundred  and  eleven  years  divide 
them.  One  century  after  Pericles  w^e  come  to  Alex- 
ander the  Great ;  or,  counting  from  the  locits  of  each, 
(444  B.  C,  and  333  B.  C.,)  exactly  one  hundi-ed  and 
eleven  years  divide  them.  During  the  period  of  two 
hundred  and  twenty-two  years  Homer  had  rest.  No- 
body was  allowed  to  torment  his  text  any  more.  And 
it  is  singular  enough  that  this  period  of  two  hundred 
and  twenty-two  years,  during  which  Homer  reigned  in 
the  luxury  of  repose,  having  nothing  to  do  but  to  let 
himself  be  read  and  admired,  was  precisely  that  ring- 
fence  of  years  within  which  lies  true  Grecian  history  ; 
for,  if  any  man  wishes  to  master  the  Grecian  history, 
he  needs  not  to  ascend  above  Pisistratus,  nor  to  come 
down  below  Alexander.  Before  Pisistratus  all  is  mist 
and  fable  ;  after  Alexander,  all  is  dependency  and  ser- 
vitude. And  remarkable  it  is  —  that,  soon  after  Alex- 
ander, and  indirectly  through  changes  caused  by  nim. 
Homer  was  again  held  out  for  the  pleasure  of  the  tor- 
mentors. Among  the  dynasties  founded  by  Alexan- 
der's lieutenants,  was  one  memorably  devoted  to 
literature.  The  Macedonian  house  of  the  Ptolemies, 
6 


62  HOMES    AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

when  seated  on  the  throne  of  Egypt,  had  founded  the 
very  first  public  library  and  the  first  learned  public. 
Alexander  died  in  the  year  320  B.  C. ;  and  already  in 
the  year  280  B.  C,  (that  is,  not  more  than  forty  years 
after,)  the  learned  Jews  of  Alexandria  and  Palestine 
had  commenced,  under  the  royal  patronage,  that  trans 
lation  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  into  Greek,  which, 
from  the  supposed  number  of  the  translators,  has  ob- 
tained the  name  of  the  Septuagint.  This  was  a  ser- 
vice to  posterity.  But  the  earliest  Grecian  service  to 
which  this  Alexandrian  library  ministers,  was  Homeric  ; 
and  strikes  us  as  singular,  when  we  contrast  it  with  the 
known  idolatry  towards  Homer  of  that  royal  soldier, 
from  whom  the  city  itself,  with  all  its  novelties,  drew 
its  name  and  foundation.  Had  Alexander  siirvived 
forty  years  longer,  as  very  easily  he  might  if  he  had 
insisted  upon  leaving  his  heel-taps  at  Babylon,  how 
angry  it  would  have  made  him  that  the  very  first  trial 
of  this  new  and  powerful  galvanic  battery  should  be 
upon  the  body  of  the  Iliad  ! 

From  280  B.  C.  to  160  B.  C,  there  was  a  constant 
succession  of  Homeric  critics.  The  immense  material 
found  in  the  public  library  towards  a  direct  history  of 
Homer  and  his  fortunes,  would  alone  have  sufiiced  to 
evoke  a  school  of  critics.  But  there  was,  besides, 
another  invitation  to  Homeric  criticism,  more  oblique, 
and  eventually  more  effective.  The  Alexandrian  libra- 
ry contained  vast  collections  towards  the  study  of  the 
Greek  language  through  all  its  dialects,  and  through 
all  its  chronological  stages.  This  study  led  back  by 
many  avenues  to  Homer.  A  verse  or  a  passage  which 
hitherto  had  passed  for  genuine,  and  which  otherwise, 
tjprhaps,  yielded  no  internal  argument  for  suspicion. 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERID^.  83 

was  now  found  to  be  veined  by  some  phrase,  dialect, 
terminal  form,  or  mode  of  using  words,  that  might  be 
too  modern  for  Homer's  age,  or  too  far  removed  in 
space  from  Homer's  Ionian  country.  We  moderns, 
from  our  vast  superiority  to  the  Greeks  themselves  in 
Greek  metrical  science,  have  had  an  extra  resource 
laid  open  to  us  for  detecting  the  spurious  in  Greek 
poetry  ;  and  many  are  the  condemned  passages  in  our 
modern  editions  of  Greek  books,  against  which  no 
jealousy  would  ever  have  arisen  amongst  unmetrical 
scholars.  Here,  however,  the  Alexandrian  critics, 
with  all  their  slashing  insolence,  showed  themselves 
sons  of  the  feeble  ;  they  groped  about  in  twilight.  But, 
even  without  that  resource,  they  contrived  to  riddle 
Homer  through  and  through  with  desperate  gashes. 
In  fact,  after  being  '  treated  '  and  '  handled  '  by  three 
generations  of  critics.  Homer  came  forth,  (just  as  we 
may  suppose  one  of  Lucan's  legionary  soldiers,  from 
the  rencontre  with  the  amphisbsena,  the  dipsas,  and 
the  water-snake  of  the  African  wilderness,)  one  vast 
wound,  one  huge  system  of  confluent  ulcers.  Often 
in  reviewing  the  labors  of  three  particularly  amongst 
these  Alexandrine  scorpions,  we  think  of  the  ^sopian 
fable,  in  which  an  old  man  with  two  wives,  one  aged 
as  befitted  him,  and  the  other  young,  submits  his  head 
alternately  to  the  Alexandrine  revision  of  each.  The 
old  lady  goes  to  work  at  first ;  and  upon  '  moral  prin- 
ciple '  she  indignantly  extirpates  all  the  black  hairs 
which  could  ever  have  inspired  him  with  the  absurd 
fancy  of  being  young.  Next  comes  the  young  critic  : 
she  is  disgusted  with  age  ;  and  upon  system  eliminates, 
(or,  to  speak  with  Aristarchus,  '  obelizes,')  all  the  gray 
Aairs.     And  thus  between  the  two  ladies  and  their  sep« 


64  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

arate  editions  of  the  old  gentleman,  he,  poor  Homeric 
creature,  comes  forth  as  bald  as  the  back  of  one's 
hand.  Aristarchus  might  well  boast  that  he  had  cured 
Homer  of  the  dry-rot :  he  has  ;  and  by  leaving  hardly 
one  whole  spar  of  his  ancient  framework.  Nor  can 
we,  with  our  share  of  persimmon,  comprehend  what 
sort  of  abortion  it  is  which  Aristarchus  would  have  us 
to  accept  and  entertain  in  the  room  of  our  old  original 
Iliad  and  Odyssey.  To  cure  a  man  radically  of  the 
toothache,  by  knocking  all  his  teeth  down  his  throat, 
seems  a  suspicious  recommendation  for  '  dental  sur- 
gery.' And,  with  respect  to  the  Homer  of  Aristarchus, 
it  is  to  be  considered,  that  besides  the  lines,  sentences, 
and  long  passages,  to  which  that  Herod  of  critics 
affixed  his  obelus  (f)or  stiletto,^"  there  were  entire  books 
which  he  found  no  use  in  assassinating  piecemeal ; 
because  it  was  not  this  line  or  that  line  into  which  he 
wished  to  thrust  his  dagger,  but  the  whole  rabble  of 
lines  —  '  tag,  rag,  and  bobtail.'  "Which  reminds  us  of 
Paul  Richter,  who  suggests  to  some  author  anxiously 
revising  the  table  of  his  own  errata  —  that  perhaps  he 
might  think  it  advisable,  on  second  thoughts,  to  put  his 
whole  book  into  the  list  of  errata ;  requesting  of  the 
reader  kindly  to  erase  the  total  work  as  an  oversight, 
or  general  blunder,  from  page  one  down  to  the  word 
finis.  In  such  cases,  as  Martial  observes,  no  plurality 
of  cancellings  or  erasures  will  answer  the  critic's  pur- 
pose :  but,  '  una  litura  potest.'  One  mighty  bucket 
of  ink  thrown  over  the  whole  will  do  the  business  ;  but, 
us  to  obelizing,  it  is  no  better  than  snapping  pocket- 
pistols  in  a  sea-fight,  or  throwing  crackers  amongst 
^e  petticoats  of  a  female  mob. 

With  the  Alexandrine  tormentors,  we  may  say  that 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERIDiE.  86 

Homer's  pre-Christian  martyrdom  came  to  an  end. 
His  post-Christian  sufferings  have  been  due  chiefly  to 
the  Germans,  ^Yho  have  renewed  the  warfare  not  only 
of  Alexandrine  critics,  but  of  the  ancient  Chorizontes. 
These  people  we  have  not  mentioned  separately,  be- 
cause, in  fact,  nothing  remains  of  their  labors,  and  the 
general  spirit  of  their  warfare  may  be  best  understood 
from  that  of  modern  Germany.  They  acquired  their 
Qame  of  Chorizontes,  (or  separators,)  from  their  prin- 
ciple of  breaking  up  the  Iliad  into  multiform  groups 
of  little  tadpole  Iliads  ;  as  also  of  splitting  the  one 
old  hazy  but  golden  Homer,  that  looms  upon  us  so 
venerably  through  a  mist  of  centuries,  into  a  vast 
reverberation  of  little  silver  Homers,  that  twinkled  up 
and  down  the  world,  and  lived  when  they  found  it 
convenient. 

Now,  let  us  combine  the  separate  points  of  this 
chronological  deduction  into  one  focus,  after  which  we 
will  examine  apart,  each  for  itself,  the  main  questions 
which  we  have  already  numbered  as  making  up  the 
elements  of  the  controversy. 

fears  bef.  Christian  Era. 

1220  — Troy. 

1000  —  Solomon  the  king  of  Je-\vry,  and  Homer  the 

Grecian  poet. 
800  —  Lycurgus  the  lawgiver,  imports  the  Iliad  into 

Sparta,  and  thus  first  introduces  Homer  to 

Continental  Greece. 
655  —  Solon,  the  Athenian  lawgiver,  Pisistratus,  the 

ruler  of  Athens,  and  Hipparchus,  his   son, 

do  something  as  yet  undetermined   for  the 

better  ascertaining  ajad  maintaining  of  the 

original  Homeric  text. 


86  HOMEB    A.ND    THE    HOMERIDJE. 

years  bef.  Christian  Era. 

444  —  From  the  text  thus  settled,  are  cited  the 
numerous  Homeric  passages  which  we  find 
in  Plato,  and  all  the  other  wits  belonging  to 
this  period,  the  noontide  of  Greek  literature, 
viz.  the  period  of  Pericles  ;  and  these  pas- 
sages generally  coincide  with  our  present 
text,  so  that  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt 
about  our  present  Iliad  being  essentially  the 
same  as  that  which  was  used  and  read  in 
the  family  of  Pisistratus. 

833  —  This  is  the  main  year  of  Alexander's  Persian 
expedition,  and  probably  the  year  in  which 
his  tutor  Aristotle  published  those  notions 
about  the  tragic  and  epic  '  unities,^  which 
have  since  had  so  remarkable  an  efi'ect  upon 
the  arrangement  of  the  Uiad.  In  particular 
the  notion  of  '  episodes,'  or  digressional  nar- 
ratives, interwoven  with  the  principal  narra- 
tive, was  entirely  Aristotelian ;  and  under 
that  notion,  people  submitted  easily  to  inter- 
polations which  would  else  have  betrayed 
themselves  for  what  they  are. 

320  —  Alexander  the  Great  dies. 

280  -\  —  The  Alexandrian  library  is  applied  to  for 
Jown  I       the  searching   revision  of   Homer ;    and   a 

to     I       school    in    Alexandrine    critics    (in    which 

160  )  school,  through  three  consecutive  genera- 
tions, flourished  as  its  leaders  —  Zenodotus, 
Aristophanes,  and  Aristarchus)  dedicated 
themselves  to  Homer.  They  are  usually 
called  the  Alexandrine  '  grainmatici '  or 
litterateurs. 


HOMER   AND   THE    HOMERID^.  87 

After  the  era  of  160  B.  C,  by  wkicli  time  the  second 
Punic  war  had  liberated  Rome  from  her  great  African 
rival,  the  Grecian  or  easturn  states  of  the  Mediterra- 
nean began  rapidly  to  fall  under  Roman  conquest. 
Henceforwards  the  text  of  Homer  suffered  no  further 
disturbance  or  inquisition,  until  it  reached  the  little 
wicked  generation  (ourselves  and  our  immediate 
fathers)  which  we  have  the  honor  to  address.  Now, 
let  us  turn  from  the  Iliad,  viewed  in  its  chronological 
series  of  fortunes,  to  the  Iliad  viewed  in  itself  and  in 
its  personal  relations  ;  i.  e.  in  reference  to  its  author, 
to  its  Grecian  propagators  or  philosophers,  and  to  its 
reformers  or  restorers,  its  re-casters  or  interpolators, 
and  its  critical  explorers. 


r 


A. HOMEB. 


About  the  year  1797,  Messrs.  Pitt  and  Dundas 
labored  under  the  scandal  of  sometimes  appearing 
drunk  in  the  House  of  Commons ;  and  on  one  par- 
ticular evening,  this  impression  was  so  strong  against 
them,  that  the  morning  papers  of  the  following  three 
days  fired  off  exactly  one  hundred  and  one  epigrams 
on  the  occasion.     One  was  this  : 

Pitt. — I  cannot  see  the  Speaker,  Hal,  —  can  youl 
Ddnd.  —  Not  see  the  Speaker  !  D — m'e,  I  see  two. 

Thus  it  has  happened  to  Homer.  Some  say,  '  There 
never  was  such  a  person  as  Homer.'  '  No  such  person 
as  Homer.  On  the  contrary,'  say  others,  '  there  were 
scores.' ;  This  latter  hypothesis  has  much  more  to  plead 
for  itself  than  the  other.  Numerous  Homers  were  pos- 
rulated  with  some  apparent  reason,  by  way  of  account- 


8»  HOMEE   AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

ing  for  the  numerous  Homeric  poems,  and  numerous 
Homeric  birthplaces.  One  man,  it  was  felt,  never 
could  be  equal  to  so  many  claims.  Ten  camel-loads 
of  poems  you  may  see  ascribed  to  Homer  in  Fabri- 
cius  ;  and  more  states  than  seven  claimed  the  man. 
These  claims,  it  is  true,  would  generally  have  van- 
ished, if  there  had  been  the  means  of  critically 
probing  them ;  but  still  there  was  a  prima  facie  case 
made  out  for  believing  in  a  plurality  of  Homers ; 
whilst  on  the  other  hand,  for  denying  Homer,  there 
aever  was  any  but  a  verbal  reason.  The  polytheism 
of  the  case  was  natural ;  the  atheism  was  monstrous. 
Ilgen,  in  the  preface  to  his  edition  of  the  Homeric 
Hymns,  says,  '  Homeri  nomen,  si  recte  video,  deri- 
vandum  est  ex  ofiuv  et  aqoi.'  And  so,  because  the 
name  (like  many  names)  can  be  made  to  yield  a 
fanciful  emblematic  meaning.  Homer  must  be  a  myth. 
But  in  fact,  Mr.  Ilgen  has  made  little  advance  with 
his  d^«  aQ(j}.  For  next  comes  the  question.  What  do 
those  two  little  Greek  words  mean  ?  ^Iqu)  is  to  join, 
to  fit,  to  adapt  —  6fis  is  together  or  in  harmony.  But 
such  a  mere  outline  or  schematism  of  an  idea  may  be 
exhibited  under  many  different  constructions.  One 
critic,  for  instance,  understands  it  in  the  sense  of 
dove-tailing,  or  metaphorical  cabinet-making,  as  if  it 
applied  chiefly  to  the  art  of  uniting  words  into  metri- 
cal combinations.  Another,  Mr.  Ilgen  himself,  takes 
it  quite  differently  ;  it  describes,  not  the  poetical  com- 
position, or  any  labor  whatever  of  the  poet  as  a 
poet,  but  the  skill  of  the  musical  accompaniment  and 
adaptations.  By  accident  the  poet  may  chance  to  be 
also  the  musical  reciter  of  the  poem ;  and  in  tha 
iharacter  he  may  have  an  interest  in  this  name  of 


HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMERIDJE.  Si) 

Ourjoog,  but  not  as  a  poet.  'Outjottv  and  6ut;otvtiv,  says 
Hesychius,  mean  avu(po,ieir,  (to  harmonize  in  point  of 
Bound  ;)  the  latter  of  the  two  is  used  in  this  sense  by 
Hesiod  ;  and  more  nicely,  says  Mr.  Ilgen,  it  means 
accinere,  to  sing  an  accompaniment  to  another  voice 
or  to  an  instrument ;  and  it  means  also  sKccinere,  to 
sing  such  an  accompaniment  in  an  under-key,  or 
to  sing  what  we.  moderns  call  a  second  —  i.  e.  an 
arrangement  of  notes  corresponding,  but  subordinated 
to  the  other  or  leading  part.  So  says  Ilgen  in  mixed 
Latin,  German,  and  Greek.  Now,  we  also  have  our 
pocket  theory.  We  maintain  that  ona  aoto  is  Greek  for 
packing  up  ;  and  very  pretty  Greek,  considering  the 
hot  weather.  And  our  view  of  the  case  is  this  — 
'  Homer '  was  a  sort  of  Delphic  or  prophetic  name 
given  to  the  poet,  under  a  knowledge  of  that  fate 
which  awaited  him  in  Crete,  where,  if  he  did  not 
pack  up  any  trunk  that  has  yet  been  discovered,  he 
was,  however,  himself  packed  up  in  the  portmanteau 
of  Lycurgus.  Such,  at  least,  is  the  coloring  which 
the  credulous  Plutarch,  nine  hundred  years  after  Ly- 
ciu-gus,  gives  to  the  story.  {  '  Man  aiive  ! '  says  a  Ger- 
man, apostrophizing  this  thoughtless  Plutarch,  '  Man 
alive !  how  could  Lycurgus  make  a  shipment  of 
Homer's  poems  in  the  shape  of  a  parcel  for  importa- 
tion, unless  there  were  written  copies  in  Crete  at  a 
time  when  nobody  could  write  ?  Or,  how,  why,  for 
what  intelligible  purpose,  could  he  have  consigned 
this  bale  to  a  house  in  the  Peloponnesus,  where 
nobody  could  read  ? ' )  Homer,  he  thinks,  •">uld  be 
imported  at  that  period  only  in  the  shape  of  an 
orchestra,  as  a  band  of  Homeric  chanter?.  But, 
returning  seriously  to  the  name  'Ouryoos,  we  oay  that, 


90  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^. 

were  the  name  absolutely  bursting  with  hieroglyphic 
life  this  would  be  no  proof  that  the  man  Homer, 
instead  of  writing  a  considerable  number  of  octavo 
volumes,  was  (to  use  Mr.  Ilgen's  uncivil  language) 
'  an  abstract  idea.'  Honest  people's  children  are  not 
to  be  treated  as  '  abstract  ideas,'  because  their  names 
may  chance  to  look  symbolical.  Bunyan's  '  Mr. 
Ready-to-sink '  might  seem  suspicious ;  but  Mr. 
Strong -i'-th' -arm,  Avho  would  have  been  a  desirable 
companion  for  such  an  exhausted  gentleman,  is  no 
abstract  idea  at  all,  but  a  dense  broad-shouldered 
reality  in  a  known  street  of  London,  liable  to  bills, 
duns,  and  other  affections  of  our  common  humanity. 
Suppose,  therefore,  that  Homer,  in  some  one  of  his 
names,  really  had  borne  a  designation  glancing  at 
symbolical  meaning,  what  of  that  ?  this  should  rather 
be  looked  upon  as  a  reflex  name,  artificially  construct- 
ed for  reverberating  his  glory  after  it  had  gathered, 
than  as  any  predestinating  (and  so  far  marvellous) 
name. 

Chrysostom,  that  eloquent  father  of  early  Chris- 
tianity, had  he  been  baptized  by  such  a  name  as 
golden-mouthed  (Chrysostomos),  you  would  have  sus- 
pected for  one  of  Mr.  Ilgen's  '  abstract  ideas  ; '  but, 
as  it  happens,  we  all  know  that  he  existed  in  the 
body,  and  that  the  appellation  by  which  he  is  usually 
recognized  was  a  name  of  honor  conferred  upon  him 
by  the  public  in  commemoration  of  his  eloquence. 
However,  we  will  bring  this  point  to  a  short  issue, 
by  drawing  the  reader's  attention  to  the  following 
ease :  Any  man,  who  has  looked  into  the  body  of 
Greek  rhetoricians,  must  know  that  in  that  hehdoma* 
idearum,    or    septenary    system    of    rhetorical    forms 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERID^.  91 

wtich  Hermogenes  and  many  otliers  illustrated,  two 
of  the  seven  (and  the  foremost  two)  were  the  qualities 
called  gor gates  and  demotes.  Now,  turn  to  the  list 
of  early  Greek  rhetoricians  or  popular  orators  ;  and 
who  stands  first  ?  Chronologically  the  first,  and  the 
very  first,  is  a  certain  Tisias,  perhaps ;  but  he  is  a 
mere  nominis  umbra.  The  first  who  made  himself 
known  to  the  literature  of  Greece,  is  Gorgias  ;  that 
Gorgias  who  visited  Athens  in  the  days  of  Socrates, 
(see  Athenaeus,  for  a  rigorous  examination  of  the 
date  assigned  to  that  visit  by  Plato,)  the  same  Gorgias 
from  whose  name  Plato  had  derived  a  title  for  one 
of  his  dialogues.  Again,  amongst  the  early  Greek 
orators  you  will  see  Deinarchus.  Gorgias  and  Dein- 
archus  ?  Who  but  would  say,  were  it  not  that  these 
men  had  flourished  in  the  meridian  light  of  Athenian 
literature  —  '  Here  we  behold  two  ideal  or  symbolic, 
orators  typifying  the  qualities  of  gorgotes  and  dei- 
notes  ! '  But  a  stronger  case  still  is  that  of  Demos- 
thenes. Were  this  great  orator  not  (by  comparison 
with  Homer)  a  modern  person,  under  the  full  blaze 
of  history,  and  coeval  with  Alexander  the  Great  333 
years  B.  C,  who  is  there  that  would  not  pronounce 
him  a  mere  allegoric  man,  when  he  understood  that  the 
name  was  composed  of  these  two  elements  —  Deraos, 
the  '  people  '  in  its  most  democratic  expression,  and 
%lhenos,  '  strength  ?  '  this  last  word  having  been  noto- 
riously used  by  Homer  {mega  sthenos  Okeanoio)  to 
express  that  sort  of  power  which  makes  itself  known 
by  thundering  sound,  '  the  thundering  strength  of  the 
people!'  or,  ^  the  people's  fulminating  mi(jht  !''^^ — 
who  would  believe  that  the  most  potent  of  Greek 
orators  had  actually  brought  with  him  thii?   ominous 


92  HOMER    ATfD    THE    HOMEKIDiE. 

and  magnificent  name,  fhis  natural  patent  of  presi- 
dency to  tlie  Athenian  hustings  ?  It  startles  us  to 
find,  lurking  in  any  man's  name,  a  prophecy  of  his 
after  career ;  as,  for  instance,  to  find  a  Latin  legend 
' —  •  And  his  glory  shall  be  from  the  Nile,''  {Est  honor 
a  Nilo,)  concealing  itself  in  the  name  Horatio  Nelson.^^ 
But  there  the  prophecy  lies  hidden,  and  cannot  he 
extracted  without  a  painful  cork-screw  process  of  ana- 
gram. Whereas,  in  Demosthenes,  the  handwriting  is 
plain  to  every  child :  it  seems  witchcraft  —  and  a 
man  is  himself  alarmed  at  his  own  predestinating 
name.  Yet  for  all  that,  with  Mr.  Ilgen's  permission, 
Demosthenes  was  not  an  '  abstract  idea.'  Conse- 
quently, had  Homer  brought  his  name  in  his  waistcoat 
pocket  to  the  composition  of  the  Iliad,  he  would  still 
not  have  been  half  as  mythical  in  appearance  aa 
several  well-authenticated  men,  decent  people's  sons, 
who  have  kicked  up  an  undeniable  dust  on  the  Athe- 
nian hustings.  Besides,  Homer  has  other  significant 
or  symbolizing  senses.  It  means  a  hostage  ;  it  means 
a  blind  man,  as  much  as  a  cabinet-maker,  or  even 
as  a  packer  of  trunks.  Many  of  these  '  significant 
names '  either  express  accidents  of  birth  commonly 
recurring,  such  as  Benoni,  '  The  child  of  sorrow.' 
a  name  frequently  given  by  young  women  in  West- 
moreland to  any  child  born  under  circumstances  of 
desertion,  sudden  death,  &c.  on  the  part  of  the 
father  ;  or  express  those  qualities  which  are  always 
presumable.  Honor,  Prudence,  Patience,  &c.,  as 
common  female  names  :  or,  if  they  imply  anything 
special,  any  peculiar  determination  of  general  qualities 
that  never  could  have  been  foreseen,  in  that  case  they 
must    be    referred   to   an   admiring    posterity  —  that 


HOMEE    AXD    THE    HOMERID^.  93 

tenior  posterity  which  was  such  for  Homer,  but  foi 
as  has  long  ago  become  a  worshipful  ancestr3\ 

From  the  name  it  is  a  natural  step  to  the  country. 
AH  the  world  knows,  by  means  of  a  satirical  couplet, 
that 

'  Seven  cities  claimed  the  mighty  Homer  dead, 
Through  which  the  living  Homer  begged  his  bread.' 

What  were  the  names  of  these  seven  cities,  (and 
islands,)  we  can  inform  the  reader  by  means  of  an  old 
Latin  couplet  amongst  our  schoolboy  recollections  — 

'  Smyrna,  Chios,  Colophon,  Salamds,  Rhodos,  Argos,  Athenoe, 
Orbis  de  patria  certat,  Homei'e,  tua.' 

Among  these  the  two  first,  Smyrna  and  Chios,  have 
very  superior  pretensions  Had  Homer  been  passed 
to  his  parish  as  a  vagrant,  or  had  Colophon  (finding  a 
settlement  likely  to  be  obtained  by  his  widow)  resolved 
upon  trying  the  question,  she  would  certainly  have 
quashed  any  attempt  to  make  the  family  chargeable 
upon  herself.  Smyrna  lies  under  strong  suspicion ; 
the  two  rivers  from  which  Homer's  immediate  progeni- 
tors were  named  —  the  Meson  and  the  Meles  —  bound 
the  plains  near  to  Smyrna.  And  Wood  insists  much 
upon  the  perfect  correspondence  of  the  climate  in  that 
region  of  the  Levant  with  each  and  all  of  Homer's 
atmospherical  indications.  We  suspect  Smyrna  our- 
selves, and  quite  as  much  as  Mr.  Wood  ;  but  still  we 
hesitate  to  charge  any  local  peculiarities  upon  the 
ilmyrniote  climate  that  could  nail  it  in  an  action  of 
damages.  Gay  and  sunny,  pellucid  in  air  and  water, 
we  are  sure  that  Smyrna  is  ;  in  short,  everything  that 
.■ould  be  wished  by  the  public  in  general,  or  by 
jurrant  dealers  in  particular.     But  really  that  any  city 


{14  HOiMEE    AND    THE    HOMEBID^. 

whatever,  in  that  genial  quarter  of  the  Mediterranean, 
should  pretend  to  a  sort  of  patent  for  sunshine,  we 
must  beg  to  have  stated  in  a  private  letter  '  to  the 
Marines  :  '  us  it  will  not  suit. 

Meantime  these  seven  places  are  far  from  being  all 
the  competitors  that  have  entered  their  names  with  the 
clerk  of  the  course.  Homer  has  been  pronounced  a 
Syrian,  which  name  in  early  Greece  of  course  included 
the  Jew  ;  and  so,  after  all,  the  Iliad  may  have  issued 
from  the  synagogue.  Babylon,  also,  dusky  Babylon, 
has  put  in  her  claim  to  Homer ;  so  has  Egypt. 
And  thus,  if  the  poet  were  really  derived  from  an  Ori- 
ental race,  his  name  (sinking  the  aspiration)  may  have 
been  Omar.  But  those  Oriental  pretensions  are  mere 
bubbles,  exhaling  from  national  vanity.  The  place 
which,  to  our  thinking,  lies  under  the  heaviest  weight 
of  suspicion  as  the  seat  of  Homer's  connections,  and 
very  often  of  his  own  residence,  is  the  island  of  Crete. 
Smyrna,  we  doubt  not,  was  his  bii'thplace.  But  in 
those  summer  seas,  quiet  as  lakes,  and  basking  in 
everlasting  sunshine,  it  would  be  inevitable  for  a 
stirring  animated  mind  to  float  up  and  down  the 
^^gean.  '  Home-keeping  youths  had  ever  homely 
wits,'  says  a  great  poet  of  our  own  ;  and  we  doubt 
not  that  Homer  had  a  yacht,  in  which  he  visited  all  the 
festivals  of  the  ^53gean  Islands.  Thus  he  acquired  that 
earned  eye  which  he  manifests  for  female  beauty 
'  Rosy-fingered,'  '  silver-footed,'  '  full-bosomed,'  '  ox- 
eyed,'  with  a  large  vocabulary  of  similar  notices,  show 
how  widely  Homer  had  surveyed  the  different  chambers 
of  Grecian  beauty  ;  for  it  has  hai')pened  through  acci- 
dents of  migration  and  consequent  modifications  of  ori- 
gin, combined  with  varieties  of  diet  and  customs,  that 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOilEEID.E.  91) 

the  (Jreek  Islands  still  differ  greatly  in  the  style  of  their 
female  beauty.  ^^  Now,  the  time  for  seeing  the  young 
women  of  a  Grecian  city,  all  congregated  under  the 
happiest  circumstances  of  display,  was  in  their  local 
festivals.  Many  Avere  the  fair  Phidiacan^  forms  which 
Homer  had  beheld  moving  like  goddesses  through  the 
mazes  of  religious  choral  dances.  But  at  the  islands 
of  los,  of  Chios,  and  of  Crete,  in  particular,  we  are  sat- 
isfied that  he  had  a  standing  invitation.  To  this  hour, 
the  Cretan  life  delights  us  with  the  very  echo  of  the 
Homeric  delineations.     Take  four  several  cases  :  — 

I.  —  The  old  Homeric  superstition,  for  instance,  which 
connects  horses  by  the  closest  sympathy,  and  even 
by  prescience,  with  theu-  masters  —  that  superstitioR 
which  Virgil  has  borrowed  from  Homer  in  his  beau- 
tiful episode  of  Mezentius  —  still  lingers  unbroken  in 
Crete.  Horses  foresee  the  fates  of  riders  who  are 
doomed,  and  express  their  prescience  by  weeping  in  a 
\iuman  fashion.  With  this  view  of  the  horse's  capa- 
c'.ty  it  is  singular,  that  in  Crete  this  animal  by  prefer- 
ence should  be  called  to  a7.o/ov,  the  brute  or  irrational 
creature.  But  the  word  Innng  has,  by  some  accident, 
been  lost  in  the  modern  Greek.  As  an  instance  both 
of  the  disparaging  name,  and  of  the  ennobling  super- 
stition, take  the  following  stanza  from  a  Cretan  ballad 
of  1825:  — 

'  S2rTiv  sxajiaXXixivc, 

Ey.XuLii  t'  alo-/o  toV 
Kai  ToxfOa  TO  iyvu^Qiaa 

Uujg  itrai  6  daiarog  rov.' 

'  Upon  which  he  mounted,  and  his  horse  wept :  and 
•Jien  he  saw  clearly  how  this  should  bode  his  death.' 


96  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEBIDJE. 

Under  the  same  old  Cretan  faitli,  Homer,  in  11.  xvii. 
437,  says  — 

' /faxQva  St  a<fi 
Gtijua  xara  (iXufniquiv  j(ufia5tg  ^ei  fivQOfitvoiir 
'Hi  10/010  no&ij.* 

'  Tears,  scalding  tears,  trickled  to  the  ground  down 
the  eyelids  of  them,  (the  horses,)  fretting  through  grief 
for  the  loss  of  their  chavioteer.' 

II,  —  Another  almost  decisive  record  of  Homer'a 
familiarity  with  Cretan  life,  lies  in  his  notice  of  the 
agrimi,  a  peculiar  wild  goat,  or  ibex,  found  in  no  part 
of  the  Mediterranean  world,  whether  island  or  main- 
land, except  in  Crete.  And  it  is  a  case  almost  without 
a  parallel  in  literature,  that  Homer  should  have  sent 
down  to  all  posterity,  in  sounding  Greek,  the  most 
minute  measurement  of  this  animal's  horns,  which 
measurement  corresponds  with  all  those  recently  ex- 
amined by  English  travellers,  and  in  particular  with 
\hvee  separate  pairs  of  these  horns  brought  to  England 
about  the  year  1836,  by  Mr.  Pashley,  the  learned 
Mediterranean  traveller  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
Mr.  Pashley  has  since  published  his  travels,  and  from 
him  we  extract  the  following  description  of  these  shy 
but  powerful  animals,  furnished  by  a  Cretan  moun- 
taineer :  —  '  The  agrimia  are  so  active,  that  they  will 
leap  up  a  perpendicular  rock  of  ten  to  fourteen  feet 
high.  They  spring  from  precipice  to  precipice;  and 
bound  along  with  such  speed,  that  no  dog  would  be 
»ble  to  keep  up  with  them  —  even  on  better  ground 
khan  that  where  they  are  found.  The  sportsman  must 
ncTer  be  to  windward  of  them,  or  they  will  perceive 
lis  approach  long  before  he  comes  within  musket-shot 


HOMEE   AXD    THE    HOMEEID^.  97 

Tliey  often  caiTy  off  a  ball ;  and,  unless  they  fall 
immediately  on  being  struck,  are  mostly  lost  to  the 
sportsman,  although  they  may  have  received  a  mortal 
wound.  They  are  commonly  found  two,  three,  or  four 
together ;  sometimes  a  herd  of  eight  and  even  nine  is 
seen.  They  are  always  larger  than  the  common  goat. 
In  the  winter  time,  they  may  be  tracked  by  the  sports- 
man in  the  snow.  It  is  common  for  men  to  perish  in 
the  chase  of  them.  They  are  of  a  reddish  color,  and 
never  black  or  parti-colored  like  the  common  goat. 
The  number  of  prominences  on  each  horn,  indicates 
the  years  of  the  ammal's  age.' 

Now  Homer  in  Iliad  iv.  105,  on  occasion  of  Panda- 
rus  drawing  out  his  bow,  notices  it  as  an  interesting 
fact,  that  this  bow,  so  beautifully  polished,  was  derived 
from  [the  horns  ofl  a  wild  goat,  aiyo:  ayniov  ;  and  the 
epithet  by  which  he  describes  this  wild  creature  is  ituXt 
—  preternatiu-ally  agile.  In  his  Homeric  manner  he 
adds  a  short  digressional  history  of  the  fortunate  shot 
from  a  secret  ambush,  by  which  Pandarus  had  himself 
killed  the  creature.  From  this  it  appears  that,  before 
the  invention  of  gunpowder,  men  did  not  think  of 
chasing  the  Cretan  ibex ;  and  from  the  cu'cumstantiali- 
ty  of  the  account,  it  is  evident  that  some  honor  attached 
to  the  sportsman  who  had  succeeded  in  such  a  capture. 
He  closes  with  the  measurement  of  the  horns  in  this 
memorable  line,  (memorable  as  preserving  such  a  fact 
for  three  thousand  years)  — 

^  Tov  nfQa  ex  xsipah/?  iy.y.aiSixa  SuyQa  ntfpvxti.' 

'  The   horns   from    chis   creature  s    head   measured 

sixteen  dora  in  length.     Now  what  is  a  doron  7     In 

the  Venetian  Scholia,  some  annutator  had  hit  the  truth, 

put  had  inadvertently  used  a  wrong  word.     This  word, 

7 


98  HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMERID-E 

an  oversight,  was  viewed  as  such  by  Heyne,  who  cor- 
rected it  accordingly,  before  any  scholar  had  seen  the 
animal.  The  doron  is  now  ascertained  to  be  a  Ho- 
meric expression  for  a  palm,  or  sixth  part  of  a  Grecian 
foot ;  and  thus  the  extent  of  the  horns,  in  that  speci- 
men which  Pandarus  had  shot,  would  be  two  feet  eight 
inches.  Now  the  casual  specimens  sent  to  Cambridge 
by  Mr.  Pashley,  (not  likely  to  be  quite  so  select  as  that 
which  formed  a  personal  weapon  for  a  man  of  rank,) 
Tt^ere  all  two  feet  seven  and  a  half  inches  on  the  outer 
margin,  and  two  feet  one  and  a  half  inches  on  the 
inner.  And  thus  the  accuracy  of  Homer's  account, 
(which  as  Heyne  observes,  had  been  greatly  doubted 
in  past  ages,)  was  not  only  remarkably  confirmed,  but 
confirmed  in  a  way  which  at  once  identifies,  beyond 
all  question,  the  Homeric  wild-goat  (ai?  ay^iog)  with 
the  present  agrimi  of  Crete ;  viz.  by  the  unrivalled 
size  of  the  animal's  horns,  and  by  the  unrivalled  power 
of  the  animal's  movements,  which  rendered  it  neces- 
sary to  shoot  it  from  an  ambush,  in  days  before  the 
discovery  of  powder. 

But  this  result  becomes  still  more  conclusive  for  our 
present  purpose  :  viz.  for  identifying  Homer  himself 
as  a  Cretan  by  his  habits  of  life,  when  we  mention  the 
scientific  report  from  Mr.  Rothman  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  on  the  classification  and  habitat  of  the 
animal  :  — '  It  is  not  the  bouquetin,'  (of  the  Alps,)  '  to 
which,  however,  it  bears  considerable  resemblance,  but 
the  real  wild-goat,  the  capra  cBgagrus  (Pallas),  the 
supposed  origin  of  all  our  domestic  varieties.  The 
horns  present  the  anterior  trenchant  edge  characteris- 
tic of  this  species.  The  discovery  of  the  cegagrus  iv 
'3rete,  is  perhaps  a  fact  of  some  zoological  interest 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOilEEID^.  90 

li  it  is  the  Jirst  well-authenticated  European  locality 
of  this  animalJ' 

Here  is  about  as  rigorous  a  demonstration  that  the 
sporting  adventure  of  Pandarus  must  have  been  a 
Cretan  adventure  as  would  be  required  by  the  Queen's 
Bench,  Whilst  the  spirited  delineation  of  the  capture, 
in  which  every  word  is  emphatic,  and  picturesquely 
true  to  the  very  life  of  1841,*  indicates  pretty  strongly 
that  Homer  had  participated  in  such  modes  of  sporting 
himself. 

ni.  —  Another  argument  for  the  Cretan  habitudes  of 
Homer,  is  derived  from  his  allusion  to  the  Cretan  tum- 
blers—  the  zu.'SigijTJ.^tg — the  most  whimsical,  perhaps, 
in  the  world  ;  and  to  this  hour  the  practice  continues 
unaltered  as  in  the  eldest  days.  The  description  is 
easily  understood.  Two  men  place  themselves  side 
by  side  ;  one  stands  upright  in  his  natural  posture  ;  the 
other  stands  on  his  head.  Of  course  this  latter  would 
be  unable  to  keep  his  feet  aloft,  and  in  the  place  be- 
longing to  his  head,  were  it  not  that  his  comrade  throws 
his  arms  round  his  ankles,  so  as  to  sustain  his  legs 
inverted  in  the  air.  Thus  placed,  they  begin  to  roll 
forward,  head  over  heels,  and  heels  over  head  :  every 
tumble  inverts  their  positions  :  but  always  there  is  one 
man,  after  each  roll,  standing  upright  on  his  pins,  and 
another  whose  lower  extremities  are  presented  to  the 
clouds.  And  thus  they  go  on  for  hours.  The  per- 
formance obviously  requires  two  associates  ;  or,  if  the 
number  were  increased,  it  must  still  be  by  pairs  ;  and 
iccordingly  Homer  describes  his  tumbles  as  in  the 
iual  number. 

*  1841  —  viz.,  the  date  of  the  first  publication  of  this  essay 


100  HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

IV.  —  A  fourtli,  and  most  remarkable,  among  the 
Homeric  mementos  of  Cretan  life,  is  the  rijkoXaXia  —  oi 
conversation  from  a  distance.  This  it  is,  and  must 
have  been,  which  suggested  to  Homer  his  preternatural 
male  voices  —  Stentor's,  for  instance,  who  spoke  as 
loud  '  as  other  fifty  men  ; '  and  that  of  Achilles,  whom 
Patroclus  roused  up  with  a  long  pole,  like  a  lion  from 
his  lair,  to  come  out  and  roar  at  the  Trojans ;  simply 
by  which  roar  he  scares  the  whole  Trojan  army.  Now, 
in  Crete,  and  from  Colonel  Leake,  it  appears,  in  Alba- 
nia, (wliere  we  believe  that  Cretan  emigrants  have  set- 
tled,) shepherds  and  others  are  found  with  voices  so 
resonant,  aided  perhaps  by  the  quality  of  a  Grecian 
atmosphere,  that  they  are  able  to  challenge  a  person 
'  out  of  sight ; '  and  will  actually  conduct  a  ceremoni- 
ous conversation  (for  all  Cretan  mountaineers  are  as 
ceremonious  as  the  Homeric  heroes)  at  distances 
which  to  us  seem  incredible.  What  distance  ?  de- 
mands a  litigious  reader.  Why,  our  own  countrymen, 
modest  and  veracious,  decline  to  state  what  they  have 
not  measured,  or  even  had  the  means  of  computing. 
They  content  themselves  with  saying,  that  sometimes 
their  guide,  from  the  midst  of  a  solitary  valley,  would 
shout  aloud  to  the  public  in  general  —  taking  his  chance 
of  any  strollers  from  that  great  body,  though  quite  out 
of  sight,  chancing  to  be  within  mouth-shot.  But  the 
French  are  not  so  scrupulous.  M.  Zallony,  in  his 
Voyage  a  VArcliipel,  &c.,  says,  that  some  of  the 
Greek  islanders  '  ont  la  voix  forte  et  animee  ;  et  deux 
habitans,  a  une  distance  d'une  demi-lieue,  meme  plus, 
peuvent  tres  facilement  s'entendre,  et  quelquefois 
B'entretenir.'  Now  a  royal  league  is  hard  upon  three 
English  miles,  and  a  sea  league,  we  believe,  is  two  ana 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERIC^.  101 

R  half;  so  that  half  a  league,  et  meme  plus,  would 
bring  us  near  to  two  miles,  which  seems  a  long  interval 
at  which  to  conduct  a  courtship.  But  this  reminds  us 
of  an  English  farmer  in  the  north,  who  certainly  did 
T(^gularly  call  in  his  son  to  dinner  from  a  place  two 
measured  miles  distant ;  and  the  son  certainly  came. 
How  far  this  punctuality,  however,  might  depend  on 
the  father's  request,  or  on  the  son's  watch,  was  best 
known  to  the  interested  party.  In  Crete,  meantime, 
and  again,  no  doubt,  from  atmospheric  advantages,  the 
rijioaxoTTta,  or  power  of  descrying  remote  objects  by  the 
eye,  is  carried  to  an  extent  that  seems  incredible.  This 
faculty  also  may  be  called  Homeric;  for  Homer  re- 
peatedly alludes  to  it. 

V, — But  the  legends  and  mythology  of  Crete  are  Avhat 
most  detect  the  intercourse  of  Homer  with  that  island. 
A  volume  would  be  requisite  for  the  full  illustration  of 
this  truth.  It  will  be  sufficient  here  to  remind  the 
reader  of  the  early  civilization,  long  anterior  to  that  of 
Greece  continental,  which  Crete  had  received.  That 
premature  refinement  furnished  an  d  priori  argument 
for  supposing  that  Homer  would  resort  to  Crete  ;  and 
inversely,  the  elaborate  Homeric  use  of  Cretan  tradi- 
tional fables,  furnishes  an  a  posteriori  argument  that 
Homer  did  seek  this  Island. 

It  is  of  great  use  towards  any  full  Homeric  investi- 
gation, that  we  should  fix  Homer's  locality  and  trace 
his  haunts ;  for  locality,  connected  with  the  internal 
indications  of  the  Iliad,  is  the  best  means  of  approxi- 
mating to  Homer's  true  era  ;  as  on  the  other  hand, 
Homer's  era,  if  otherwise  deduced,  would  assist  the 
indications  of  the  Iliad  to  determine  his  locality.    And 


102  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMBEID^. 

if  any  reader  demands  in  a  spirit  of  mistrust,  How  it 
is  that  Crete,  so  harassed  by  intestine  wars  from  Turk- 
ish, Venetian,  and  recently  from  Egyptian  tyranny, 
the  bloodiest  and  most  exterminating,  has  been  able, 
through  three  thousand  years,  to  keep  up  unbroken 
her  inheritance  of  traditions  ?  we  reply.  That  the  same 
cause  has  protected  the  Cretan  usages,  which  (since 
the  days  of  our  friend  Pandarus)  has  protected  the 
Cretan  ibex ;  viz.  the  physical  conformation  of  the 
island  —  mountains  ;  secret  passes  where  one  resolute 
band  of  two  hundred  men  is  equal  to  an  army  ;  ledges 
of  rock  which  a  mule  cannot  tread  with  safety  ;  crags 
where  even  infantry  must  break  and  lose  their  cohe- 
sion ;  and  the  blessedness  of  rustic  poverty,  which 
offers  no  temptation  to  the  marauder.  These  have 
been  the  Cretan  safeguards  ;  and  a  brave  Sfakian  popu- 
lation, by  many  degrees  the  finest  of  all  Grecian  races 
in  their  persons  and  their  hearts. 

The  main  point  about  Homer,  the  man,  which  now 
remains  to  be  settled,  amongst  the  many  that  might  be 
useful,  and  the  few  that  are  recoverable,  is  this  — 
Coxdd  he  lorite  ?  and  if  he  could,  did  he  use  that 
method  for  fixing  his  thoughts  and  images  as  they 
arose  ?  or  did  he  trust  to  his  own  memory  for  the 
rough  sketch,  and  to  the  chanters  for  publishing  the 
revised  copies  ? 

This  question,  however,  as  it  will  again  meet  us 
under  the  head  Solon  and  the  Pisistratidce,  we  shall 
defer  to  that  section ;  and  we  shall  close  this  personal 
•ection  on  Homer  by  one  remark  borrowed  from  Plato. 
The  reader  will  have  noticed  that,  amongst  the  cities 
pretending  to  Homer  as  a  native  child,  stands  the  city 
»£  Argus.     Now  Plato,  by  way  of  putting  a  summary 


HOIIETI    AXD    THE    HOMEEID^.  103 

end  to  all  sucli  wiucly  pretensions  from  Dorian  cities, 
introduces  in  one  of  Ids  dialogues  a  stranger  who  re- 
marks, as  a  leading  characteristic  of  Homer  —  thai 
everywhere  he  keeps  the  reader  mo^dng  amongst  scenes, 
images  and  usages,  which  reflect  the  forms  and  color- 
ing of  Ionian  life.  This  remark  is  important,  and  we 
shall  use  it  in  om-  summing  up. 


PART    II. 

THE    ILIAD. 

What  is  the  Iliad  about  ?  What  is  the  true  and 
proper  subject  of  the  Iliad  7  If  that  could  be  settled, 
it  would  facilitate  our  inquiry.  Now  everybody  knows, 
that  according  to  the  ordinary  notion,  founded  upon 
the  opening  lines  of  this  poem,  the  subject  is  the 
WratJi  of  Achilles.  Others,  however,  have  thought, 
wdth  some  reason,  that  the  idea  was  not  sufiiciently 
self-diff"usive  —  was  not  all-pervasive  :  it  seemed  a  lig- 
ament that  passed  through  some  parts  of  the  poem, 
and  connected  them  intimately,  but  missed  others  alto- 
gether. It  has,  therefore,  become  a  serious  question 
—  How  much  of  the  Iliad  is  really  interveined,  or  at 
all  modified,  by  the  son  of  Peleus,  and  his  feud  with 
Agamemnon  ?  To  settle  which,  a  German  Jew  took 
a  singular  method. 

We  have  all  heard  of  that  barbarous  prince,  (the 
Btory  is  told  of  several,)  who,  in  order  to  decide  terri- 
torial pretensions  between  himself  and  a  brother  po- 
tentate, sent  for  a  large  map  of  the  world  ;  and  from 
Jiis,  with  a  pair  of  scissors,  cutting  out  the  rival  states, 
lajefully  weighed  them  against  each  other,  in   gold 


104  irOMEB,    AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

scales.  We  see  no  reason  for  laughing  at  tte  pnnce  r 
for,  the  paper  being  presumed  of  equal  thir.kness,  the 
map  accurate,  and  on  a  large  scale,  the  result  would 
exhibit  the  truth  in  a  palpable  shape.  Probably  on 
this  hint  it  was,  that  the  Jew  cut  out  of  a  Greek  Uiad 
every  liae  that  could  be  referred  to  Achilles  and  his . 
wrath  —  not  omitting  even  the  debates  of  Olympus, 
where  they  grew  out  of  that.  And  what  was  his  re- 
port? Why,  that  the  wrath  of  Achilles  formed  only 
'  26  per  shent '  upon  the  whole  Iliad ;  that  is,  in  effect, 
one  quarter  of  the  poem. 

Thus  far,  therefore,  we  must  concede  to  the  Chori- 
zontes,  or  breakers-up  of  the  Iliad,  that  the  original 
stem  on  which  the  Iliad  grew  was  probably  an  Achil- 
leis  ;  for  it  is  inconceivable  that  Homer  himself  could 
have  expected  such  a  rope  of  sand  as  the  Iliad  now 
presents,  to  preserve  its  order  and  succession  under 
the  rough  handling  of  posterity.  Watch  the  fate  of 
any  intricate  machine  in  any  private  family.  All  the 
loose  or  detached  parts  of  such  a  machine  are  sure  to 
be  lost.  Ask  for  it  at  the  end  of  a  year,  and  the  more 
elaborate  was  the  machine,  so  much  the  more  certain 
is  the  destruction  which  will  have  overtaken  it.  It  is 
only  when  any  compound  whole,  whether  engine, 
poem,  or  tale,  carries  its  several  parts  absolutely  inter- 
locked with  its  own  substance,  that  it  has  a  chance  of 
maintaining  its  integrity. 

Now,  certainly  it  cannot  be  argued  by  the  most  idol- 
atrous lover  of  the  Iliad,  that  the  main  central  books 
exhibit  that  sort  of  natural  intercohesion  which  deter- 
mines their  place  and  order.  But,  says  the  reader 
here  they  are  ;  they  have  held  together  :  no  use  ir 
asking  whether  it  was  natural  for  them  to  hold  together 


HOMER   AND   THE   HOMERID^.  105 

Tliey  have  reached  us :  it  is  now  past  asking  —  Could 
Homer  expect  them  to  reach  us  ?  Yes,  they  have 
reached  us  ;  but  since  when  ?  Not,  probably,  in  their 
present  arrangement,  from  an  earlier  period  than  that 
of  Pisistratus.  When  manuscripts  had  once  become 
general,  it  might  be  easy  to  preserve  even  the  loosest 
succession  of  parts  —  erpecially  where  great  venera- 
tion for  the  author,  and  the  general  notoriety  of  the 
poems,  would  secure  the  fidelity  of  copies.  But  what 
the  sceptics  require  to  be  enlightened  upon,  is  the 
principle  of  cohesion  which  could  carry  these  loose 
parts  of  the  Iliad  over  that  gulf  of  years  between 
Homer  and  Pisistratus — the  one  a  whole  millennium 
before  our  Christian  era,  the  other  little  more  than  half 
a  millennium ;  and  whilst  traditionary  transmission 
through  singers  and  harpers  constituted,  perhaps,  the 
sole  means  of  preservation,  and  therefore  of  arrange- 
ment. 

Let  not  the  reader  suppose  German  scepticism  to  be 
the  sole  reason  for  jealousy  with  regard  to  the  present 
canon  of  the  Iliad.  On  the  contrary,  sovie  interpola- 
tions are  confessed  by  all  parties.  For  instance,  it  ia 
certain  ^-  and  even  Eustathius  records  it  as  a  regulai' 
tradition  in  Greece  —  that  the  night-adventure  of 
Diomed  and  Ulysses  against  the  Trojan  camp,  their 
capture  of  the  beautiful  horses  brought  by  Ehesas,  and 
of  Dolon  the  Trojan  spy,  did  not  originally  form  a 
part  of  the  Iliad.  At  present  this  adventure  forms  the 
tenth  book,  but  previously  it  had  been  an  independent 
tpos,  or  epic  narrative,  perhaps  locally  circulated 
amongst  the  descendants  of  Diomed,*  and  known  by 

*  Descendants,  or  perhaps,  amongst  the  worshippers ;  for, 
though  evei7body  is  not  aware  of  that  fact,  many  of  the  Grecian 


106  HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEEIDJfi. 

the  title  of  the  Doloneia.  Now,  if  one  such  intercala- 
tion could  pass,  why  not  more  ?  With  respect  to  this 
particular  night  episode,  it  has  been  remarked,  that  its 
place  in  the  series  is  not  asserted  by  any  internal 
indication.  There  is  an  allusion,  indeed,  to  the  wrath 
of  Achilles  ;  but  probably  introduced  to  harmonize  it 
as  a  part  of  the  Iliad,  by  the  same  authoiity  which 
introduced  the  poem  itself :  else,  the  whole  book  may 
be  dropped  out  without  any  hiatus.  The  battle,  sug- 
gested by  Diomed  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  Book,  takes 
place  in  the  eleventh  ;  and,  as  the  critics  remark,  no 
allusion  is  made  in  that  eleventh  book,  by  any  of  the 
Grecian  chiefs,  to  the  remarkable  plot  of  the  interven- 
ing night. 

But  of  all  the  incoherences  which,  have  been  de- 
tected in  the  Iliad,  as  arising  out  of  arbitrary  juxta- 
positions between  parts  not  originally  related,  the  most 
amusing  is  that  brought  to  light  by  the  late  Wilhelm 
Mueller.  '  It  is  a  fact,'  says  he,  '  that  (as  the  arrange- 
ment now  stands)  Ulysses  is  not  ashamed  to  attend 
three  dinner  parties  on  one  evening.'  First,  he  had 
a  dinner  engagement  with  Agamemnon,  which,  of 
course,  he  keeps,  [B.  IX.  90  ;]  so  prudent  a  man  could 

heroes  at  Troy  were  deified.  Ulysses  and  his  wife,  Idomeneua, 
&c.,  assume  even  a  mystical  place  in  the  subsequent  superstitions 
of  Greece.  But  Diomed  also  became  a  god  :  and  the  occasion 
was  remarkable.  A  peerage  (f.  e.  a  godship)  had  been  promised 
ty  the  gods  to  his  father  Tydeus  ;  but  when  the  patent  came  tc 
le  enrolled,  a  flaw  was  detected  —  it  was  found  that  Tydeus  had 
once  eaten  part  of  a  man  !  What  was  to  be  done  ?  Tlie  objection 
was  fatal ;  no  cannibal  could  be  a  god,  though  a  god  might  be  a 
cannibal.  Tydeus  therefore  requested  Jove  to  settle  the  rever- 
lion  on  -his  son  Diomed.  •  And  that,'  said  Jove,  ♦  I  shall  have 
great  pleasure  in  doing.' 


H.OIVIEK    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  107 

not  possibly  neglect  an  invitation  from  the  commander 
of  the  forcts.  Even  in  free  and  independent  England, 
the  sovereign  does  not  ask  you  to  dinner,  but  commandi 
your  attendance.  Next  he  dines  with  Achilles,  [B.  IX. 
221  ;]  and  finally  with  Diomed,  [B.  XL  578:]  Now, 
Diomed  was  a  swell  of  the  first  magnitude,  and  a  man 
of  fashion,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  'Troilus  and  Cressida' 
of  Shakspeare,  (who  took  his  character  from  tradition, 
and  makes  him  the  Greek  rival  of  Troilus.)  He  there- 
fore pushes  his  dinner  as  far  towards  '  to-morrow  '  as 
was  well  possible ;  so  that  it  is  near  morning  before 
that  dinner  is  over.  And  the  sum  of  the  Ithacan's  enor- 
mities is  thus  truly  stated  by  Mueller :  — '  Deny  it  who 
will,  the  son  of  Laertes  accepts  three  distinct  feeds, 
between  the  sunset  suppose  of  Monday  and  the  dawn 
of  Tuesday ! ' 

This  is  intolerable.  Yet,  perhaps,  apologists  will 
say,  (for  some  people  will  varnish  anything,)  '  If  the 
man  had  three  dinners  in  one  day,  often,  perhaps,  in 
three  days  he  had  but  one  dinner ! '  For  ourselves, 
we  frankly  confess,  that  if  there  is  one  man  in  the 
Grecian  camp  whom  we  should  have  believed  capable 
of  such  a  thing,  it  is  precisely  this  cunning  Ulysses. 
Mueller  insists  on  calling  him  the  '  noble '  Ulysses ; 
but  that  is  only  to  blacken  his  conduct  about  the 
.dinners.  To  our  thinking,  his  nearest  representative 
in  modern  times  is  '  Sixteen-string  Jack,'  whose  life 
may  be  read  in  the  '  Newgate  Calendar.'  What 
most  amuses  ourselves  in  the  business  is  Mueller's  so 
gtealthily  pursuing  Ulysses  tnrough  two  books  of  the 
Iliad,'  in  order  to  watch  how  many  dinner  parties  he 
attended  !  And  there  is  a  good  moral  in  the  whole 
discovery  ;  for  it  shows  all  knaves,  that,  though  hidden 


108  HOMER   AND   THB    HOMEEID^. 

for  tliree  thousand  years,  their  tricks  are  sure  to  be 
found  out  at  the  last. 

In  general,  it  is  undeniable  that  some  of  the  German 
objections  to  the  present  arrangement,  as  a  possible 
Homaric  arrangement,  are  valid.  For  instance,  the 
following,  against  the  present  position  of  the  duel 
between  Paris  and  Menelaus  :  —  'This  duel,  together 
wi*;h  the  perfidious  shot  of  Pandarus,  and  the  general 
engagement  which  follows,  all  belonging  to  the  same 
epos,  wear  the  appearance  of  being  perfectly  insulated 
where  they  now  stand,  and  betray  no  sort  of  connection 
with  any  of  the  succeeding  cantos.  In  the  'Aqtama 
Jionr,Sovg,  which  forms  the  fifth  canto,  the  whole  inci- 
dent is  forgotten,  and  is  never  revived.  The  Grecians 
make  no  complaint  of  the  treachery  practised ;  nor  do 
the  gods  {ex  officio  the  avengers  of  perjury)  take  any 
steps  to  punish  it.  Not  many  hours  after  the  duel. 
Hector  comes  to  his  brother's  residence  ;  but  neither 
of  them  utters  one  word  about  the  recent  duel ;  and  as 
little  about  what  had  happened  since  the  duel,  though 
necessarily  unknown  to  Paris.  Hector's  reproaches, 
again,  to  Paris,  for  his  Idchete,  are  in  manifest  contra- 
diction to  the  single  combat  which  he  had  so  recently 
faced.  Yet  Paris  takes  no  notice  whatevei  of  the 
energy  manifested  by  himself.  And  as  to  his  final 
evasion,  that  was  no  matter  of  reproach  to  him,  since 
it  was  the  work  of  a  goddess.  Besides,  when  he 
announces  his  intention  to  Hector  of  going  again  to 
the  field  of  battle,  who  would  not  anticipate  from  him 
a  proposal  for  re-establishing  the  interrupted  duel  ? 
Yet  not  a  syllable  of  all  that.  Now,  with  these  broad 
indications  to  direct  our  eyes  upon  the  truth,  can  we 
doubt  that  the  duel,  in  connection  with  the  breach  o' 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEEID^.  109 

truce,  and  all  that  now  fills  the  third  and  fourth  books' 
—  [in  a  foot  note  Mueller  adds  —  '  and  also  the  former 
half  of  the  second  book  ']  —  '  originally  composed  an 
independent  ejjos,  which  belonged,  very  probably,  to 
an  earlier  stage  of  the  Trojan  war,  and  was  first  thrust 
by  the  authorized  arrangers  of  the  "  Iliad,"  into  the 
unhappy  place  it  now  occupies  ;  namely,  in  the  course 
of  a  day  already  far  overcrowded  with  events  ?  ' 

In  the  notes,  where  Mueller  replies  to  some  ob- 
jections, he  again  insists  upon  the  impossibility,  under 
the  supposition  that  Homer  had  authorized  the  present 
arrangement,  of  his  never  afterwards  making  the 
Greeks  allude  to  the  infraction  of  the  treaty  ;  especi- 
ally when  Hector  proposes  a  second  duel  between 
himself  and  some  one  of  the  Grecian  chiefs.  Yet, 
perhaps,  as  regards  this  particular  feature  (namely, 
the  treachery)  of  the  duel,  we  would  suggest,  that,  as 
the  interposition  of  Venus  is  not  to  be  interpreted  in 
any  foolish  allegorical  way,  (for  the  battle  interferences 
of  the  gods  are  visible  and  undisguised,)  doubtless  the 
Greeks,  not  less  than  the  Trojans,  understood  the  in- 
terruption as  in  effect  divine  ;  after  which,  the  act  of 
Pandarus  is  covered  by  the  general  apology,  no  matter 
in  what  light  Pandarus  might  have  meant  it.  Even  in 
the  first  '  Iliad,'  it  is  most  childish  to  understand  the 
whispering  of  Minerva  to  Achilles  as  an  allegorical 
way  of  expressing,  that  his  good  sense,  or  his  pru- 
dence arrested  his  hand.  Nonsense  !  that  is  not 
Homer's  style  of  thinking,  nor  the  style  of  Homeric 
Bges.  Where  Mars,  upon  being  wounded,  howls, 
and,  instead  of  licking  the  man  who  offered  him 
\h.i3  irsult,  shows  the  white  feather  and  limps  off 
in  confusion,  do   these   critics   imagine   an   allegory  ? 


110  HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMERID^. 

What  is  an  allegoric  howl  ?  or  what  does  a  cut 
sneaking  from  a  fight  indicate  symbollically  ?  The 
Homeric  simplicity  speaks  plainly  enough.  Venus 
finds  that  her  man  is  likely  to  be  beaten  ;  which,  by 
the  way,  surprises  us  ;  for  a  stout  young  shepherd, 
like  Paris,  ought  to  have  found  no  trouble  in  taking 
the  conceit  out  of  an  elderly  diner-out,  such  as  Mene- 
'aus.  And,  perhaps,  with  his  mauleys,  he  would. 
Finding,  however,  how  the  affair  was  likely  to  go, 
Venus  withdraws  her  man.  Paris  does  not  come  to 
time  ;  the  umpires  quarrel ;  the  mob  breaks  the  ring  ; 
and  a  battle  royal  ensues.  But  the  interference  of 
Venus  must  have  been  palpable  :  and  this  is  one  of 
the  circumstances  in  the  '  Iliad  '  which  satisfies  us,  that 
the  age  of  Troy  was  removed  by  several  generations 
from  Homer.  To  elder  days,  and  men  fancied  more 
heroic  than  those  of  his  own  day  —  (a  fancy  which 
Homer  expressly  acknowledges)  —  he  might  find  him- 
self inclined  to  ascribe  a  personal  intercourse  with  the 
gods  ;  and  he  would  find  everywhere  an  audience 
favoring  this  belief.  A  generation  of  men  that  often 
rose  themselves  to  divine  honors,  might  readily  be 
conceived  to  mix  personally  with  the  gods.  But  no 
man  could  think  thus  of  his  own  contemporaries,  of 
whom  he  must  know  that  the  very  best  were  liable 
to  indigestion,  and  suspected  often  to  have  schirroua 
livers.  Really  no  :  a  dyspeptic  demigod  it  makes  one 
dyspeptic  to  think  of ! 

Meantime  the  duel  of  Paris  is  simply  overlookerl 
and  neglected  in  the  subsequent  books  of  the  Iliad  :  it 
is  nov'here  absolutely  contradicted  by  implication  :  but 
sther  cases  have  been  noticed  in  the  Iliad,  which  in- 
volve direct  contradictions,  and  therefore  argue  either 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^  111 

that  Homer  in  those  '  naps  '  which  Horace  imputes  to 
him  slumbered  too  profoundly,  or  that  counterfeits  got 
mixed  up  with  the  true  bullion  of  the  Iliad.  Amongst 
other  examples  pointed  out  by  Heyne  or  by  Tranceson, 
the  following  deserve  notice  : 

1.  Pylsemenes  the  Paphlagonian,  is  killed  by  Mene- 
laus,  {11.  V.  579-590;)  but  further  on  {11.  xiii.  643- 
658)  we  find  the  poor  man  pretty  well  in  his  health, 
and  chief  mourner  at  the  funeral  of  his  son  Harpalion. 

2.  Sarpedon  is  wounded  in  the  leg  by  Tlepolemus, 
{II.  V.  028,  &;c.)  and  an  ugly  wound  it  is,  for  the  bone 
is  touched,  so  that  an  operation  might  be  looked  for. 
Operation,  indeed  !  Two  days  after  he  is  stumping 
about  upon  his  pins,  and  '  operating '  upon  other 
people  {11.  XII.  290,  &c.).  The  contradiction,  if  it 
really  is  one,  was  not  found  out  until  the  approved 
chronology  of  the  Iliad  was  settled.  Our  reason  for 
doubting  about  the  contradiction  is  simply  this  :  Sar- 
pedon, if  we  remember,  was  a  son  of  Jupiter  ;  and 
Jupiter  might  have  a  particular  salve  for  wounded 
legs. 

3.  Teucer,  however,  was  an  undeniable  mortal.  Yet 
he  {11.  VIII.  324)  is  wounded  desperately  in  the  arm 
by  Hector.  His  neure  is  smashed,  which  generally  is 
taken  to  mean  his  bow-string  ;  but  some  surgical  critics 
understand  it  as  the  sinew  of  his  arm.  At  all  events 
it  was  no  trifle  ;  his  brother,  Telanionian  Ajax,  and 
two  other  men,  carry  off  the  patient  groaning  heartily, 
probably  upon  a  shutter,  to  *.h.e  hospital.  He  at  last  is 
booked  for  the  doctor,  you  think.  Not  at  all.  Next 
Tjiorning  he  is  abroad  on  the  field  of  battle,  and  at  hia 
«ld  trade  of  thumping  respectable  men  {11.  xii.  387.) 

4.  The  history  of  Vulcan,  and  his  long  day's  tumble 


112  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERID^. 

from  the  sky,  in  iZ.  i.  586,  does  not  harmonize  with 
the  account  of  the  same  accident  in  11.  xix.  394. 

5.  As  an  inconsistency  not  in  the  Iliad  internally, 
but  between  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey,  it  has  often 
been  noticed,  that  in  the  former  this  same  Vulcan  is 
married  to  Venus,  whilst  in  the  Odyssey  his  wife  la 
one  of  the  Graces, 

'  As  upon  earth,'  says  Mueller,  '  so  in  Olympus,  the 
fable  of  the  Iliad  is  but  loosely  put  together ;  and  we 
are  not  to  look  for  any  very  severe  succession  of 
motives  and  results,  of  promises  and  performances, 
even  amongst  the  gods.  In  the  first  Iliad,  Thetis 
receives  a  Jovian  guarantee  (viz.  Jove's  authentic  nod) 
on  behalf  of  her  offended  son  Achilles,  that  he 
will  glorify  him  in  a  particular  way,  and  the  way  was 
by  making  the  Trojans  victorious,  until  the  Grecians 
should  see  their  error,  and  propitiate  the  irritated  hero. 
Mindful  of  his  promise,  Jove  disposes  Agamemnon, 
by  a  delusive  dream,  to  lead  out  the  Grecian  host  to 
battle.  At  this  point,  however,  Thetis,  Achilles,  and 
the  ratifying  nod,  appear  at  once  to  be  blown  thereby 
out  of  the  Jovian  remembrance.  The  duel  between 
Paris  and  Menelaus  takes  place,  and  the  abrupt  close 
of  that  duel  by  Venus,  apparently  with  equal  indiffer- 
ence on  Jove's  part  to  either  incident.  Even  at  the 
general  meeting  of  the  gods  in  the  fourth  book,  there 
is  no  renewal  of  the  proposal  for  the  glorifying  of 
Achilles.  It  is  true  that  Jove,  from  old  attachments, 
would  willingly  deliver  the  strong-hold  of  Priam  from 
nin,  and  lead  the  whole  feud  to  some  peaceful  issue. 
But  the  passionate  female  divinities,  Juno  and  Minerva, 
iriumph  over  his  moderation,  and  the  destruction  of 
froy   is  finally   determined.     Now,  grant   that  Jove 


HOMER    AXD    THE    HOMEKID^.  113 

wanted  firmness  for  meeting  the  furious  demands  of 
the  goddesses,  by  a  candid  confession  of  his  previous 
promise  to  Thetis,  still  we  might  have  looked  for  some 
intimation  that  this  degradation  of  himself  in  the  eyes 
of  a  confiding  suppliant  had  cost  Inm  a  struggle.  But 
no  ;  nothing  of  the  kind.  In  the  next  great  battle  the 
Trojans  are  severely  pressed,  and  the  Greeks  are  fai 
enough  from  feeling  any  regret  for  the  absence  of 
Achilles.  Nay,  as  if  expressly  to  show  that  Achillea 
was  nol  .wanted,  Diomed  turns  out  a  trump  of  the  first 
magnitude ;  and  a  son  of  Priam  describes  him  pointedly 
as  more  terrific  than  Pelides,  the  goddess-born  !  And, 
indeed,  it  was  time  to  retreat  before  the  man  who  had 
wounded  Mars,  making  him  yell  with  pain,  and  howl 
like  "  ten  thousand  mortals."  This  Mars,  however  — 
he  at  least  must  have  given  some  check  to  the  advanc- 
ing Greeks  ?  True,  he  had  so  ;  but  not  as  fulfilling 
any  Jovian  counsels,  which,  on  the  contrary,  tend 
rather  to  the  issue  of  this  god's  being  driven  out  of  the 
Trojan  ranks.  First  of  all,  in  the  eighth  book,  Jove 
steps  forward  to  guide  the  course  of  war,  and  with 
remembrance  of  his  promise  to  Thetis,  he  forbids 
peremptorily  both  gods  and  goddesses  to  interfere  on 
either  side ;  and  he  seats  himself  on  Mount  Ida  to  over- 
look the  field  of  battle,  threatening  to  the  Greeks,  by 
his  impartial  scales,  a  preponderance  of  calamity. 
From  this  review,  it  appears  tolerably  certain,  that  the 
thii'd  to  the  seventh  book  belong  to  no  epos  that  could 
have  been  dedicated  to  the  glory  of  Achilles.  The 
wrath  of  that  hero,  his  reconciliation,  and  his  return  to 
battle,  having  been  announced  in  the  opening  as  the 
theme  of  the  poem,  are  used  as  a  connecting  link  for 
beading  together  all  the  cantos  about  other  heroes 
8 


114  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^. 

whicli  had  been  intercalated  between  itself  and  tlu, 
close ;  but  this  tie  is  far  too  slack ;  and  one  rude  shake 
makes  all  the  alien  parts  tumble  out.' 

Time  of  the  Iliad.  —  Next  let  us  ask,  as  a  point 
very  important  towards  investigating  the  succession 
and  possible  nexus  of  the  events,  what  is  the  duration 
—  the  compass  of  time  —  through  which  the  action  of 
the  poem  revolves  ?  This  has  been  of  old  a  disputed 
point ;  and  many  are  the  different  '  diaries  '  which 
have  been  abstracted  by  able  men  during  the  last  two 
centuries.  Bossu  made  the  period  of  the  whole  to  be 
jbrty-seven  days ;  Wood  (in  the  earliest  edition)  forty  ; 
and  a  calculation  in  the  Memoirs  de  Trevoux  (May, 
1708)  carries  it  up  to  forty-nine.  But  the  computus 
now  finally  adopted,  amended,  and  ruled  irreversibly, 
is  that  of  Heyne,  (as  given  in  a  separate  Excursus,) 
countersigned  by  Wolf ;  this  makes  the  number  to  be 
fifty-two  ;  but,  with  a  subsequent  correction  for  an 
obvious  oversight  of  Heyne's,  fifty-one. 

'Book  I. — Nine  days  the  plague  rages,  (v.  53.) 
On  the  tenth  Achilles  calls  a  meeting  of  the  staff 
officers.  What  occurs  in  that  meeting  subsequently 
occasions  his  mother's  visit.  She  tells  him,  (v.  422,) 
that  Jove  had  set  off  the  day  before  to  a  festival  of  the 
Ethiopians,  and  is  not  expected  back  in  less  than  twelve 
days.  From  this  we  gather,  that  the  visit  of  Thetis  to 
Jove  (v.  493)  must  be  transplanted  to  the  twenty-first 
day.  With  this  day  terminates  the  first  book,  wiuch 
cortains,  therefore,  twenty-one  days. 

'  Book  II.  up  to  V.  293  of  Book  VII.,  comprehends 
a  single  day  —  viz.  the  twenty-second. 

'  Book  VII.  (v.  381,  421,  and  432,)  the  twenty-third 
day. 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  115 

•  Book  VII.  (v.  433-465,)  the  twenly-fourtli  day. 

'  Book  YIII.  up  to  the  close  of  Book  X.,  the  twenty- 
fifth  day  and  the  succeeding  night. 

'  Book  XI.  up  to  the  close  of  Book  XVIII.,  the 
twenty-sixth  day. 

'  Book  XIX.  to  V.  201  of  Book  XXIII.,  the  twenty- 
seventh  day,  with  the  succeeding  night. 

'  Bcok  XXIII.  (v.  109-225,)  the  twenty-eighth  day. 

'  Book  XXIII.  (v.  226  to  the  end,)  the  twenty-ninth 
day. 

'  Book  XXIV.  —  Eleven  days  long  Achilles  trails 
the  corpse  of  Hector  round  the  sepulchre  of  Patroclus. 
On  the  twelfth  day  a  meeting  is  called  of  the  gods  ; 
consequently  on  the  thirty-ninth  day  of  the  general 
action  ;  for  this  indignity  to  the  dead  body  of  Hector, 
must  be  dated  from  the  day  of  his  death,  which  is  the 
twenty  seventh  of  the  entire  poem.  On  the  same  thirty- 
ninth  day,  towards  evening,  the  body  is  ransomed  by 
Priam,  and  during  the  night  is  conveyed  to  Troy.  With 
the  morning  of  the  following  day,  viz.  the  fortieth,  the 
venerable  king  returns  to  Troy  ;  and  the  armistice  of 
eleven  days,  which  had  been  concluded  with  Achilles, 
is  employed  in  mourning  for  Hector  during  nine  days, 
and  in  preparing  his  funeral.  On  the  tenth  of  these  days 
takes  place  the  burning  of  the  body,  and  the  funeral 
banquet.  On  the  eleventh  is  celebrated  the  solemn 
interment  of  the  remains,  and  the  raising  of  the  sepul- 
chral mound.    With  the  twelfth  recommences  the  war. 

'  Upon  this  deduction,  the  entire  Iliad  is  found  to 
revolve  within  the  space  of  fifty-one  days.  Heyne's 
raisreckoning  is  obvious  :  he  had  summed  up  the  eleven 
days  of  the  corpse-trailing,  as  a  clear  addition,  by  ju5t 
BO  much,  to  the  twenty-seven  previous  days  ;  whereas 


116  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEKID^, 

the  twenty-seventli  of  those  days  coincidea  with  the 
first  of  the  trailing,  and  is  thus  counted  twice  over  in 
effect.' 

This  computus,  in  the  circumstantial  detail  here  pre- 
sented, is  due  to  Wilhelm  Mueller.  But  suhstantially, 
it  is  guaranteed  by  numerous  scholars.  And,  as  to 
Heyne's  little  blunder,  corrected  by  Wolf,  it  is  nothing, 
for  we  have  ourselves  known  a  Quaker,  and  a  celebrated 
bank,  to  make  an  error  of  the  same  amount,  in  com- 
puting the  number  of  days  to  run  upon  a  bill  at  six 
weeks.  But  we  soon  '  wolfed '  them  into  better  arith- 
metic, upon  finding  that  the  error  was  against  ourselves. 

Name  of  the  Iliad.  —  What  follows  is  our  own 
suggestion.  We  off"er  it  as  useful  towards  our  final 
judgment,  in  which  Ave  shall  pronounce  firmly  upon 
the  site  of  Homer,  as  not  essentially  altered  ;  as  being 
true  and  very  Homer  to  this  day  —  that  same  Homer 
who  was  raised  into  a  state  property  by  Pisistratus  in 
555  B.  C. ;  who  was  passionately  revered  by  Pericles 
in  444  B.  C. ;  who  was  idolized  and  consecrated  by 
Alexander  in  333  B.  C.  When  first  arose  the  Iliad  7 
This  we  cannot  now  determine :  but  so  much  we 
know,  that  the  eldest  author  now  surviving,  in  Avhom 
that  designation  occurs  as  a  regular  familiar  word,  ia 
Herodotus  ;  and  he  was  contemporary  with  Pericles. 
Herodotus  must  be  considered  as  the  senior  author  in 
that  great  period  of  Athenian  splendor,  as  Plato  and 
Xenophon  were  the  junior.  Herodotus,  therefore, 
might  have  seen  Hipparchus,  the  son  of  Pisistratus,  if 
that  prince  had  not  been  cut  off"  prematurely  by  Jaco- 
binical daggers.  It  is,  therefore,  probable  in  a  high 
degree,  that  the  name  Iliad  was  already  familiar  to 


HOMEfi    AND    THE     HO.AlEfllD^.  117 

Pisistratus ;  first,  because  it  is  so  used  by  Herodotus 
Bs  to  imply  that  it  was  no  novelty  at  that  time  ;  seC' 
ondly,  because  he  who  first  gathered  the  entire  series 
of  Trojan  legends  into  artificial  unity,  would  be  the 
first  to  require  an  expression  for  that  unity.  The  col- 
lector would  be  the  first  to  want  a  collective  title. 
Solon,  therefore,  or  Pisistratus,  no  matter  which,  did 
(as  we  finally  believe)  first  gather  the  whole  cycle  of 
Iliac  romances  into  one  body.  And  to  this  aggregate 
whole,  he  gave  the  name  of  llias.  But  why  ?  in  what 
sense  ?  Not  for  any  purpose  of  deception,  small  or 
great.  Were  that  notion  once  admitted,  then  we  open 
a  door  to  all  sorts  of  licentious  conjectures.  Con- 
sciously authorizing  one  falsehood,  there  is  no  saying 
where  he  would  have  stopped.  But  there  Avas  no 
falsehood.  Pisistratus,  whose  original  motive  for 
stirring  in  such  an  affair,  could  have  been  only  love 
and  admiration,  was  not  the  author,  but  the  sworn  foe 
of  adulteration.  It  was  to  prevent  changes,  not  to 
sanction  them,  that  he  could  ever  have  interposed  with 
the  state  authority.  And  what  then  did  he  mean  by 
calling  these  collected  poems  the  Iliad  ?  He  meant 
precisely  what  a  man  would  now  mean,  who  should 
Dublish  a  body  of  ancient  romances  relating  to  the 
I'ound  table  or  to  Charlemagne,  or  to  the  Crusades ; 
not  implying,  by  any  unity  in  the  title,  that  these  ro- 
aiances  were  all  one  man's  work,  or  several  parts  of 
one  individual  whole,  but  that  they  related  to  one  ter- 
minal object.  The  unity  implied,  would  lie  not  in  the 
mind  conceiving,  nor  in  the  nexus  of  the  several  divis- 
ions, but  in  the  community  of  subject.  As  when  we 
call  the  five  books  of  Moses  by  the  name  of  Penta- 
teuch,  we  do  not  assert  any  unity  running  through 


118  HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEEIDiE. 

these  books,  as  fhough  one  took  up  the  subject  where 
anothei  left  off;  for,  in  reality,  some  parts  are  purely 
historical,  some  purely  legislative.  But  we  mean  that 
all,  whether  record  of  fact,  or  record  of  institution  and 
precept,  bear  upon  one  object  —  the  founding  a  sep- 
arate nation  as  the  depository  of  truth,  and  elaborately, 
therefore,  kept  from  blending  with  Pagans.  On  the 
one  hand,  therefore,  we  concede  to  the  sceptics,  that 
several  independent  poems  (though  still  by  possibility 
from  the  same  author)  were  united  by  Pisistratus.  But 
on  the  other  hand,  we  deny  any  fraud  in  this  —  we 
deny  that  the  name  Iliad  was  framed  to  disguise  this 
independence.  Some  had  a  closer  nexus  than  others. 
But  what  Pisistratus  says,  is  this  :  —  Behold  a  series 
of  poems,  all  ancient ;  all  from  Homeric  days ;  and 
(whether  Homer's  or  not)  all  relating  to  the  great  cru- 
sade against  Ilium. 

SOLON    AND    PISISTKATDS. 

Wliat  was  it,  service  or  injury,  that  these  men  did 
to  Homer  ?  No  one  question,  in  the  whole  series  of 
Homeric  questions,  is  more  perplexing.  Homer  did  a 
great  service  to  them ;  if  tradition  is  right,  to  both  of 
them  ;  — viz.  by  settling  a  legal  dispute  for  each  ;  so 
.'hat  it  was  a  knavish  return  for  such  national  benefits, 
if  they  —  if  these  two  Athenian  statesmen  —  went 
about  to  undermine  that  text  from  which  they  had 
reaped  such  singular  fruits  in  their  own  administra- 
tion. But  we  are  sure  they  did  no  such  thing  :  they 
were  both  gentlemen  —  both  scholars.  Yet  something, 
certainly,  they  must  have  done  to  Homer :  in  that 
point  all  are  agreed  :  but  what  it  was  remains  a  mys- 
tery to  this  hour.     Every  man  is  entitled  to  his  opin* 


nOMER    AND    THE    HOMEEIDJ^,.  119 

ion ;  we  to  oui's  ;  which  in  some  corner  or  other  we 
shall  whisper  into  the  private  ear  of  the  public,  and 
into  the  public  ear  of  our  private  friends 

The  first  thing  which  puzzles  every  man  of  reflec- 
tion, when  he  hears  of  this  anecdote,  is  —  the  extra- 
ordinary coincidence  that  two  great  lawgivers,  at 
different  eras,  should  both  interest  themselves  in  a 
poet ;  and  not  only  so,  but  the  particular  two  who 
faced  and  confronted  each  other  in  the  same  way  that 
any  leader  of  English  civilization  (Alfred  suppose) 
might  be  imagined  as  facing  and  confronting  any 
leader  (Charlemagne  suppose)  of  French  ciAT-lization. 
For  Chi-istian  Europe,  the  names  France  and  England 
are  by  analogy  what  for  Greece  were  the  names  Sparta 
and  Athens ;  we  mean,  as  respects  the  two  great  fea- 
tures of  permanent  rivalship  and  permanent  leadership. 
From  the  moment  when  they  were  regulaidy  organized 
by  law  and  institutions,  Athens  and  Sparta  became  the 
two  counterforces  of  Greece.  About  800  B.  C,  Ly- 
curgus  draws  up  a  system  of  laws  for  Sparta  ;  more 
than  two  centuries  later,  Solon  draws  up  a  system  of 
laws  for  Athens.  And  most  unaccountably,  each  of 
these  political  leaders  takes  upon  him,  not  passively 
as  a  private  literary  citizen,  to  admire  the  Homeric 
poems  —  that  might  be  natural  in  men  of  high  birth 
enjoying  the  selectest  advantages  of  education  —  but 
actually  to  privilege  Homer,  to  place  him  on  the  matri- 
cula  of  denizens,  to  consecrate  his  name,  and  to  set  in 
motion  the  whole  machinery  of  government  on  behalf 
of  his  poems.  Wherefor,  and  for  what  purpose  ? 
Oi  the  part  of  Lycurgus,  for  a  purpose  well-known 
Bud  appreciated,  viz.  to  use  the  IJiad  as  the  basis  of 
public  instruction,  and  thus  mediately  as  the  basis  of  a 


120  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEBIDJE. 

warlike  morality  —  but  on  the  part  of  Solon,  for  no 
purpose  ever  yet  ascertained.  Strangely  enough,  from 
the  literary  land,  and  from  the  later  period,  we  do  not 
learn  the  '  how  '  and  the  '  why  ; '  from  the  gross  illite- 
rate land  and  the  short  period,  we  do. 

What  Lycurgus  did  was  rather  for  an  interest  of 
Greece  than  for  any  interest  of  Homer.  The  order  of 
his  thoughts  was  not,  as  has  been  supposed  —  '  I  love 
Homer ;  and  I  will  show  my  love  by  making  Sparta 
co-operate  in  extending  his  influence  ; '  no,  but  this  — 
'  I  love  Sparta  ;  and  I  will  show  my  love  by  making 
Homer  co-operate  with  the  martial  foundations  of  the 
land  ;  I  will  introduce  a  martial  poem  like  the  Iliad, 
to  operate  through  public  education  and  through  public 
festivals.'  For  Solon,  on  the  other  hand.  Homer  must 
have  been  a  final  object ;  no  means  towards  something 
else,  but  an  end  per  se.  Doubtless,  Solon,  as  little  as 
Lycurgus,  could  be  indifferent  to  the  value  of  this 
popular  poem  for  his  own  professional  objects.  But, 
practically,  it  is  not  likely  that  Solon  could  find  any 
opening  for  Homeric  services  in  that  direction.  Pre- 
cisely those  two  causes  which  would  ensure  to  Solon  a 
vast  superiority  to  Lycurgus  in  all  modes  of  intellec- 
tual liberality,  viz.  his  chronologic  period  and  his 
country,  must  have  also  caused  that  the  whole  ground 
would  be  pre-occupied.  For  education,  for  popular 
influence,  Athens  would  have  already  settled  upon 
Homer  all  the  dowry  of  distinction  which  Solon  might 
risk  to  settle.  Athens  surely  in  the  sixth  century 
B.  C,  if  Sparta  in  the  ninth. 

At  thii  point  our  suspicions  revolve  upon  us.  That 
the  two  vanward  potentates  of  Greece  —  Athens  and 
Spai'ta  —  should  each   severally  ascribe   to   her    <;wc 


HOMEB   A.>"D    THE    HOilEKID^.  121 

greatest  lawgiver  separate  Homeric  labor,  looks  too 
muoli  like  the  Papal  heraldiies  of  European  sovereigns : 
all  the  great  ones  are  presumed  to  have  rendered  a 
characteristic  service  to  the  chm-ch.  'Are  you  the 
most  Christian  ?  Be  it  so  ;  but  I  am  the  most  Catholic  ; 
and  my  brother  here  is  the  most  faithful,  or  Defender 
of  the  Faith.'  '  Was  Homer,  do  you  say,  an  Ionian  ? 
And  did  Athens  first  settle  his  text  ?  With  all  my 
heart :  and  we  Dorians  might  seem  to  have  no  pai-t  in 
that  inheritance  ;  being  rather  asinine  in  our  literary 
character  ;  but  for  all  that,  Dorian  as  he  was,  you  can- 
not deny  that  my  countryman,  Lycurgus,  first  intro- 
duced Homer  upon  the  continent  of  Greece.'  Indeed 
the  Spartans  had  a  craze  about  the  Iliad,  as  though  it 
bore  some  special  relation  to  themselves  :  for  Plutarch 
mentions  it  as  a  current  saying  in  Sparta —  that  Hesiod 
was  the  poet  for  Helots,  (and  in  a  lower  key  perhaps 
they  added  —  for  some  other  people  beside;)  since, 
according  to  his  poetry,  the  end  of  man's  existence  is 

—  to  plough  and  to  haiTOW  ;  but  Homer,  said  they, 
is  the  Spartan  poet ;  since  the  moral  of  the  Iliad 
proclaims  —  that  the  whole  duty  of  man  lies  in 
fighting. 

Meantime,  though  it  cannot  be  denied  that  these 
repeated  attempts  in  Greek  statesmen  to  connect  them- 
selves with  Homer  by  some  capital  ser\'ice,  certaicly 
do  look  too  much  like  the  consequent  attempts  cf 
western  nations  to  connect  their  ancestries  with  Troy 

—  still  there  seems  to  be  good  historic  authority  for 
each  of  the  cases  separately.  Or,  if  any  case  were 
Buspicious,  it  would  be  that  of  Lycurgus.  Solon,  the 
legislatorial  founder  of  Athens  —  the  Pisistratidae  or 
final  princes  of  Athens  —  these  great  men,  it  is  imde- 


122  HOMEE    AND    IHE    HOMEKID^. 

niable;  did  link  their  names  with  Homer  :  eacli  and 
all  by  specific  services.  What  services  ?  what  could 
be  the  service  of  Solon  ?  Or,  after  Solon,  what  ser- 
vice could  remain  for  Pisistratus  r 

A  conceited  Frenchman  pretended  to  think  that 
history,  to  be  read  beneficially,  ought  to  be  read  back- 
wards, i.  e.  in  an  order  inverse  to  the  chronological 
succession  of  events.  This  absurd  rule  might,  in  the 
present  case,  be  applied  with  benefit.  Pisistratus  and 
his  son  Hipparchus  stand  last  in  the  order  of  Homeric 
modifiers.  Now  if  we  ascertain  what  it  was  that  they 
did,  this  may  show  us  what  it  was  that  their  prede- 
cessors did  not  do  ;  and  to  that  extent  it  will  narrow 
the  range  from  which  we  have  to  select  the  probable 
functions  of  those  predecessors. 

What  then  was  the  particular  service  to  Homer  by 
which  Pisistratus  and  his  son  made  themselves  so  fa- 
mous ?  The  best  account  of  this  is  contained  in  an 
obscure  grammaticus  or  litterateur,  one  Diomedes,  no 
small  fool,  who  thus  tells  his  tale  :  —  '  The  poems  of 
Homer,  in  process  of  time,  were  it  by  fire,  by  flood, 
by  earthquake,  had  come  near  to  extinction  ;  they  had 
not  absolutely  perished,  but  they  were  continually 
coming  near  to  that  catastrophe  by  wide  dispersion. 
From  this  dispersion  it  arose  naturally  that  one  place 
possessed  a  hundred  Homeric  books  ;  some  second 
place  a  thousand ;  some  tliird  place  a  couple  of  hun- 
dreds ;  and  the  Homeric  poetry  was  fast  tending  to 
oblivion.  In  that  conjuncture  there  occurred  to  Pisis- 
tratus, who  ruled  at  Athens  about  555  years  B.  C,  the 
following  scheme  :  —  With  the  double  purpose  of  gain- 
ing glory  for  himself  and  preservation  for  Homer,  he 
dispersed  a  notification  through  Greece,  that  every  man 


HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEEID^.  123 

who  possessed  any  Homeric  fragments,  was  to  delivei 
them  into  Athenian  hands  at  a  fixed  rate  of  compen- 
Bation.  The  possessors  naturally  hastened  to  remit 
their  quotas,  and  were  honestly  paid.  Indeed,  Pisis- 
tratus  did  not  reject  even  those  contributors  who  pre- 
sented verses  already  sent  in  by  another ;  to  these  also 
he  paid  the  stipulated  price,  without  any  discount  at  all. 
And  by  this  means  it  happened  that  oftentimes  he 
recovered,  amongst  a  heap  of  repetitions,  one,  two,  or 
more  verses  that  w-ere  new.  At  length  this  stage  of 
the  labor  was  completed  ;  all  the  returns  from  every 
quarter  had  come  in.  Then  it  was  that  Pisistratus 
summoned  seventy  men  of  letters,  at  salaries  suitable 
to  their  pretensions,  as  critical  assessors  upon  these 
poems  ;  giving  to  each  man  separately  a  copy  of  the 
lines  collected  by  himself,  with  the  commission  of 
arranging  them  according  to  his  individual  judgment. 
When  the  commissioners  had  closed  their  labors,  Pisis- 
tratus reassembled  them,  and  called  upon  each  man 
separately  to  exhibit  his  own  result.  This  having  been 
done,  the  general  voice,  in  mere  homage  to  merit  and 
the  truth,  unanimously  pronounced  the  revisions  of 
Aiistarchus  and  Zenodotus  to  be  the  best ;  and  after  a 
second  collation  between  these  two,  the  edition  of 
Aristarchus  was  found  entitled  to  the  palm.' 

Now  the  reader  must  not  allow  himself  to  be  re- 
pelled by  the  absurd  anachronisms  of  this  account, 
which  brings  Pisistratus  of  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  face 
to  face  with  Aristarchus  of  the  third ;  nor  must  he 
allow  too  much  weight  to  the  obvious  plagiarism  from 
the  old  marvellous  legend  of  the  seventy-two  Jewish 
ranslators.  That  very  legend  shows  him  how  possi- 
ble it  is  for  a  heap  of  falsehood,  and  evon  miracles, 


124  HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMEEIDJS. 

to  be  embroidered  upon  a  story  whicb,  after  all,  is  true 
in  its  main  texture.  We  all  know  it  to  be  true,  in  spite 
of  the  fables  engrafted  upon  the  truth,  that  under  the 
patronage  of  a  Macedonian  prince,  seventy- two  learned 
Jews  really  were  assembled  at  Alexandria,  and  did 
make  that  Greek  translation  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures, 
which,  from  the  number  of  the  translators,  we  still  call 
the  Septuagint.  And  so  we  must  suppose  this  ignorant 
Diomedes,  though  embellishing  the  story  acco-rding  to 
his  slender  means,  still  to  have  built  upon  old  traditions. 
Even  the  rate  of  payment  has  been  elsewhere  recorded , 
by  which  it  appears  that  '  penny-a-liners '  (of  whom 
we  hear  so  much  in  our  day)  existed  also  for  early 
Athens. 

If  this  legend  were  accurate  even  in  its  commence- 
ment, it  would  put  down  Plato's  story,  that  the  Homeric 
poems  were  first  brought  to  Athens  by  Hipparchus,  the 
Bon  of  Pisistratus  ;  and  it  would  put  down  the  mere 
possibility  that  Solon,  thirty  or  forty  years  earlier  than 
either,  had  ever  intermeddled  with  those  poems.  But, 
if  we  adopt  the  tradition  about  Lycurgus,  or  even  if 
we  reject  it,  we  must  believe  that  copies  of  the  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  (that  is,  quoad  the  substance,  not  quoad 
the  pregPint  arrangement)  existed  in  Athens  long  be- 
fore the  Pisistratidse,  or  even  Solon.  Were  it  only 
;hrough  the  Rhapsodoi,  or  musical  reciters  of  the 
Homeric  poems,  both  Iliad  and  Odyssey  must  have 
been  known  many  a  long  year  before  Pisistratus  ;  or 
else  we  undertake  to  say  they  would  never  have  been 
known  at  all.  For,  in  a  maritime  city  like  Athens, 
jommimicating  so  freely  with  Ionia  and  with  all  insular 
Greece,  so  constitutionally  gay  besides,  how  is  it  pos- 
libie  to  suppose   that   the   fine    old   poetic  romancee 


HOMIE.    AXD    THE    HOMERID^.  1^5 

ehanted  to  tlie  accompaniment  of  harps,  about  thf 
paladins  of  Greece,  could  be  unknown  or  unwelcomed, 
unless  by  supposing  them  non-existent  ?  If  thej 
lurked  anywhere,  they  would  assuredly  float  across 
these  sunny  seas  of  the  ^gean  to  Athens  ;  that  city 
which,  in  every  age,  (according  to  Milton,  Par.  Reg.) 
was  equally  '  native  to  famous  ^\its'  and  '■hospitable  ' 
—  that  is,  equally  fertile  in  giving  birth  to  men  of 
genius  itself,  and  forward  to  welcome  those  of  foreign 
states. 

Throughout  this  story  of  Diomedes,  disfigured  as  it 
is,  we  may  read  that  the  labors  of  Pisistratus  were 
applied  to  written  copies.  That  is  a  great  point  in 
advance.  And  instantly  it  reacts  upon  Solon,  as  a 
means  of  approximating  to  the  nature  of  his  labors. 
If  (as  one  German  writer  holds)  Solon  was  the  very 
first  person  to  take  down  the  Iliad  in  writing,  from  the 
recitations  of  the  Rhapsodoi,  then  it  would  seem  that 
this  step  had  suggested  to  Pisistratus  the  further  im- 
provement of  collating  Solon's  written  copy  with  such 
partial  copies,  or  memorials,  or  recollections  of  re- 
citers, as  would  be  likely  to  exist  in  many  diS'erent 
parts  of  Greece,  amongst  families  or  cities  tracing 
their  descent  from  particular  heroes  of  the  Iliad.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  Pisistratus  was  the  first  man  who 
matured  a  written  copy,  what  will  then  remain  open  to 
Solon  for  his  share  in  the  play  ?  This ;  viz.  that  he 
applied  some  useful  check  to  the  exorbitancies  of  the 
musical  rehearsers.  The  famous  Greek  words,  still 
surviving  in  Plato  and  Diogenes  Laertius,  support  this 
notion.  The  words  must  be  true,  though  they  may  be 
obscure.  They  must  involve  the  fact,  though  they 
may   conceal   it.     What  are   they  ?      Let   us   review 


126  HOMER    AND    IHE    HOMERID-aS. 

them.    To  chant  i^  vTfoXtjxf/tms  —  and  to  chant  il  ino^okin 
—-these  were  the  new  regulations  introduced  ly  Solon 
and   his    successor.      Now,  what    is    the  meaning  of 
vTToXtjiptg  ?     The  commonest   sense  of  the  word  is  — 
opinion.      Thus,   on    the  title-page  of  Lord    Shaftes- 
bury's   Characteristics,    stands,    as   a   general   motto, 
llavxa  vnoXrjrpig,   '  All    things  are  matters    of  opinion. 
This,    however,    is  a    sense    which    will    not    answer 
Another  and  rarer  sense  is  —  succession.    And  the  way 
in  which  the  prepositions  vno  and  sub  are  used   by  the 
encients  to  construct  the  idea  of  succession,  (a  problem 
which  Dr.  Parr  failed  to  solve,)  is  by  supposing  such  a 
case  as  the  slated  roof  of  a  house.     Were  the  slates 
simply  contiguous  by  their  edges,  the  rain  would  soon 
show  that   their  succession  was  not  perfect.     But,  by 
making  each  to  underlap  the  other,  the  series  is  made 
virtually  perfect.     In  this  way,  the  word  came  to  be 
used  for  succession.     And,  applied  to  the  chanters,  it 
must  have  meant  that,  upon  some  great  occasion  peri- 
odically recurring,  they  were  obliged  by  the   new  law 
to  pursue  the  entire  series  of  the  several  rhapsodies 
composing   the  Iliad,  and  not  to  pick  and  choose,  as 
heretofore,  with  a  view  to  their  own  convenience,  or 
to  local  purposes.     But  what  was   the  use   of  this  ? 
We  presume  that  it  had  the  same  object  in  view  as  the 
rubric  of  the  English  church,  {we  believe  also  of  the 
Jewish    synagogue,)   in    arranging  the   succession    of 
lessons  appointed  for  each  day's  service  ;  viz.  to  secure 
the  certainty  that,  within  a  known  period  of  time,  the 
whole  of  the  canonical   books  should   be  read  once 
through  from  beginning  to  end.     The  particular  pur- 
pose is  of  our  own  suggestion  ;  but  the  fact  itself  is 
olaced  beyond  all  doubt.    Plato  says,  that  the  chanters 


HOMEB    AND    THE    H0MEEID2E.  127 

were  obliged,  at  the  great  Pauatlienaic  festival,  to  re- 
cite the  Iliad  i%  r/roAiji/'Eui?  i^tltig ;  where  the  first  ex- 
pression (f?  vna}.r^\piwc')  applies  to  the  persons,  the  second 
(iV/tSi^s)  to  the  poem. 

The  popular  translation  would  be  —  that  they  were 
obliged,  by  relieving  each  other,  or  by  regular  relays 
of  chanters,  to  recite  the  whole  poem  in  its  order,  by 
succession  of  party,  from  beginning  to  end.  This  very 
story  is  repeated  by  an  orator  still  extant  not  long  after 
Plato.  And  in  his  case  there  is  no  opening  to  doubt, 
for  he  does  not  affirm  the  story,  he  assumes  it,  and  re- 
calls it  to  the  people's  attention  as  a  thing  notorious  to 
them  all.  The  other  expression  it  r,TO;*u/t,c  or  vjioShiSiiv 
has  occasioned  some  disputing  ;  but  why,  we  cannot 
conjecture.  If  ever  there  was  a  word  whose  meaning 
L»  certain  in  a  position  like  this,  that  word  is  ruo^aUw, 
with  its  derivatives.  And  we  are  confounded  at  hear- 
ing that  less  than  a  Boeckh  would  not  suffice  to  prove 
that  the  i\  rno^oh;?  means,  '  by  way  of  suggestion,' 
*  under  the  condition  of  being  prompted.'  The  mean- 
ing of  which  is  e'sident :  a  state  copy  of  the  Iliad, 
however  it  was  obtained  by  Solon,  a  canon  of  the  Ho- 
meric text,  was  confided  to  a  prompter,  whose  duty 
was  to  check  the  slightest  de\"iation  from  this  author- 
ized standard,  to  allow  of  no  shortenings,  omissions,  or 
Bycophautic -^  alterations.  In  this  sense  the  two  regula- 
tions support  and  check  each  other.  One  provides  for 
quantity,  the  other  for  quality.  One  secures  the  whole 
Bhall  be  recited  ;  the  other  secures  the  fidelity  of  this 
whole.  And  here  again  comes  in  the  story  of  Salamia 
to  give  us  the  '  why '  and  the  '  wherefore '  of  these 
uew  regulations.  If  a  legal  or  international  question 
%bout  Salamis  had  just  been  decided  by  the  mere  au« 


128  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEKIDiE. 

thority  of  a  passage  in  the  Iliad,  it  was  high  time  foi 
statesmen  to  look  about  them,  and  to  see  that  a  poem, 
which  was  thus  solemnly  adjudged  to  be  good  evidence 
in  the  supreme  courts  of  law,  should  have  its  text 
authenticated.  And  in  fact,  several  new  cases  (see 
Eustathius  on  the  second  Iliad,)  were  decided  not  long 
after  on  the  very  same-Homeric  evidence. 

But  does  not  this  prompter's  copy  presuppose  a  com- 
plete manuscript  of  the  Iliad  ?  Most  certainly  it  does  ; 
ond  the  question  is  left  to  the  reader,  whether  this  in 
fact  was  the  service  by  which  Pisistratus  followed  up 
and  completed  the  service  of  Solon,  (as  to  going 
through  the  whole  Iliad  ;)  or  whether  both  services 
were  due  to  Solon  ;  in  which  case  it  will  become  neces- 
sary to  look  out  for  some  new  idea  of  the  service  that 
could  remain  open  to  Pisistratus. 

Towards  that  idea,  let  us  ask  universally  what  ser- 
vices could  be  rendered  by  a  statesman  in  that  age  to 
a  poem  situated  as  the  Iliad  ?  Such  a  man  might 
restore ;  might  authenticate ;  might  assemble ;  might 
arrange. 

1 .  He  might  restore  —  as  from  incipient  decay  and 
corruption. 

2.  He  might  authenticate  —  as  between  readings 
that  were  doubtful. 

3.  He  might  assemble  —  as  from  local  dispersion  of 
parts. 

4.  He  might  arrange  —  as  from  an  uncertain  and 
arbitrary  succession. 

All  these  services,  we  have  little  doubt,  were,  in 
fact,  rendered  by  Pisistratus.  The  three  first  are 
fclready  involved  in  the  story  of  our  foolish  friend  Dio- 
tuedes.     Pisistratus  would  do  justice  to  the  wise  enact- 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEKID-E.  129 

ment  of  Solon,  by  which  the  Iliad  was  raised  into  a 
liturgy,  periodically  rehearsed  by  law  at  the  greatest 
of  the  Athenian  festivals :  he  would  admire  the  regu- 
lation as  to  the  prompter's  (or  state)  copy.  But  this 
latter  ordinance  was  rather  the  outline  of  a  useful  idea, 
than  one  which  the  first  proposer  could  execute  satis- 
factorily. Solon  probably  engrossed  upon  brazen 
tablets  such  a  lext  as  any  one  man  could  obtain.  But 
it  would  be  a  work  of  time,  of  labor,  of  collation,  and 
fine  taste,  to  complete  a  sound  edition.  Even  the  work 
of  Pisistratus  was  liable,  as  we  know,  to  severe  mal- 
treatment by  the  Alexandrine  critics.  And  by  the  Avay, 
those  very  Alexandrine  revisals  presuppose  a  received 
and  orthodox  text :  for  how  could  Zenodotus  or  Aris- 
tarchus  breathe  their  mildewing  breath  upon  the  re- 
ceived readings,  how  could  they  pronounce  X  or  r,  for 
instance,  spurious,  unless  by  reference  to  some  stand- 
ard text  in  which  X  or  r  was  adopted  for  legitimate  ? 
However,  there  is  one  single  argument  upon  which  the 
reader  may  safely  allow  himself  to  suspect  the  suspicions 
of  Aristarchus,  and  to  amend  his  emendations.  It  is 
this :  Valkenaer  points  out  to  merited  reprobation  a  cor- 
rection applied  by  Aristarchus  to  the  autobiographical 
sketch  of  himself,  -which  Phcenix  gives  to  Achilles  in 
II.  X.  Phcenix,  in  his  old  age,  goes  back  to  his  youthful 
errors  in  a  spirit  of  amiable  candor.  Out  of  affection  to 
his  mother,  whose  unmerited  ill-treatment  he  witnessed 
with  filial  sympathy,  he  had  offered  a-t  her  request, 
an  injury  to  his  father  for  which  he  could  obtain  no 
forgiveness.  T;,  ni6ouip;  says  Phoenix  :  her  I  obeyed. 
Which  passage  one  villain  alters  into  Tii  s  ni<3o,u»;r,  her 
f  di  1  not  obey :  and  thus  the  whole  story  is  ruined, 
•iut  Aristarchus  goes  further  :  he  cancels  and  stilettoes^® 
9 


130  HOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

the  -w-hole  passage.  Why  then  ?  Upon  what  conceiv- 
able objection?  Simply,  in  both  cases,  upon  the  ridic- 
ulous allegation  —  that  this  confession,  so  frank,  and 
even  pathetic,  was  immoral ;  and  might  put  bad  thoughts 
into  the  minds  of  '  our  young  men.'  Oh,  you  two  old 
vagabonds  !  And  thus,  it  seems,  we  have  had  a  Bowd- 
ler's  Iliad,  long  before  our  own  Bowdler's  Shakspeare. 
It  is  fit,  however,  that  this  anecdote  should  be  known, 
as  it  shows  the  sort  of  principles  that  governed  the  re- 
visal  of  Ai'istarchus.  An  editor,  who  could  castrate  a 
text  upon  any  plea  of  disliking  the  sentiment,  is  not 
trustworthy.  And  for  our  parts,  v/e  should  far  prefer 
the  authorized  edition  of  Pisistratus  to  all  the  remodelled 
copies  that  were  issued  from  the  Alexandrine  library. 

So  far,  with  reference  to  the  three  superior  functions 
of  Pisistratus.  As  to  the  fourth,  his  labor  of  arrange- 
ment, there  is  an  important  explanation  to  be  made. 
Had  the  question  been  simply  this  —  given  four-and- 
twenty  cantos  of  the  Iliad,  to  place  them  in  the  most 
natural  order  ;  the  trouble  would  have  been  trivial  for 
the  arranger,  and  the  range  of  objections  narrower  for 
us.  Some  books  determine  their  own  place  in  the 
series ;  and  those  which  leave  it  doubtful  are  precisely 
the  least  important.  But  the  case  is  supposed  to  have 
been  very  different.  The  existing  distribution  of  the 
poem  into  twenty-four  tolerably  equal  sections,  desig- 
nated by  the  twenty-four  capitals  of  the  Greek  alphabet, 
is  ascribed  to  Arrstarchus.  Though  one  incomparable 
donkey,  a  Greek  scholiast,  actually  denies  this  upon 
the  following  ground :  Do  you  know  reader,  (says  he,) 
why  Homer  began  the  Iliad  with  the  word  menin, 
[iiipnY'?  Look  this  way  and  I  will  tell  you:  it  is  a 
great  mystery.     What  does  the  little  fi  of  the  Greek 


HOMER    AXD    THE    HOMEKID^.  131 

alphabet  signify  numerically  ?  "Why,  forty.  Good  : 
And  what  does  the  i;  mean  ?  Why,  eight.  Now,  put 
both  together,  you  have  a  prophecy  or  a  promise  on  the 
part  of  Homer,  that  he  meant  to  write  forty-eight 
books,  which  proves  that  the  Iliad  must  have  had  origi- 
nally twenty-fom-.  Take  twenty-foxu"  from  forty- eight, 
and  there  remain  just  twenty-four  books  for  the  Odys- 
sey.     Quod  erat  demonstrandum. 

But  what  Aristarchus  did  was  a  trifle  —  interesting 
rather  to  the  eye  or  the  bookbinder  than  the  under- 
standing. There  was  an  earlier  and  a  former  impor- 
tant arrangement,  due  probably  to  Pisistratus.-® 

THE    AOIDOI,    KHAPSODOI,    HOMERID^. 

The  Germans  are  exceedingly  offended,  that  any 
man  in  ancient  days,  should  presume  to  call  himself  a 
rhapsodes,  without  sending  down  a  sealed  letter  to  pos- 
terity, stating  all  the  reasons  which  had  induced  him  to 
take  so  unaccountable  a  step.  And  the  uproar  is  incon- 
ceivable which  they  have  raised  about  the  office  or 
function  indicated  by  the  word,  as  well  as  about  the 
word  itself  considered  etymologically.  We,  for  our 
part,  honestly  confess,  that,  instead  of  finding  that 
perplexity  in  the  rhapscdos  which  our  German  broth erj 
find  for  us,  we  are  chiefly  perplexed  in  accounting  for 
their  perplexity.  However,  we  had  been  seduced  into 
writing  a  very  long  essay  on  the  several  classes  named 
in  our  title,  until  we  came  to  this  discovery ;  that,  how- 
ever curious  in  itself,  the  whole  inquiry  could  not  be, 
»nd  was  not,  by  the  Germans  themselves,  connected 
rith  any  one  point  at  issue  about  Homer  or  the  Iliad. 
\£tev  all  the  fighting  on  the  question,  it  remains  past 
denial,  that  the  one  sole  proposition  by  which  the  rhap' 


132  HOMUR   AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

sodoi  have  been  brought  even  into  any  semblance  of 
connection  with  Homer,  is  the  following  :  —  Every 
narrative  poem  of  any  length,  was  called  a  rhapsodia  , 
and  hence  it  is,  that  the  several  subordinate  narratives 
of  the  Iliad,  such  as  that  called  the  yiQt^cta  Ayaui^ivovog, 
the  prowess  of  Agammemnon  —  the  ^Qigtta  Aiuvrog,  the 
prowess  of  Ajax —  iiiQinoTa^iog  ^laxij,  the  battle  by  the 
river  side  —  'Oni-onona,  the  fabric  of  the  arms  —  Ntwv 
tcarciXoyog,  the  mustcr  of  the  ships  —  JwXorsta,  the  ad- 
venture of  Dolon  —  and  many  others,  which  are  now 
united  into  a  composite  structure  called  the  Iliad 
were  always  introduced  by  the  chanter  with  a  proemial 
address  to  some  divinity.  And  the  Hymns,  which  we 
have  now  under  the  name  of  Homer,  are  supposed  to 
have  been  occasional  preludes  of  that  sort.  But  say 
the  Germans,  these  prelusive  hymns  were  often  the 
composition  confessedly  of  the  chanters.  Well,  and 
what  then  ?  Why  nothing,  reader  ;  simply  nothing. 
Only  we,  out  of  our  benignity  and  mere  grace,  not 
wishing  to  see  brother  literati  exposing  themselves  in 
this  way,  without  a  rag  of  logic  about  them,  are  re- 
solved to  suppose  them  tending  to  this  inference  —  that 
if  these  fellows  forged  a  beginning,  they  might  also 
have  forged  a  middle  and  an  end.  Some  such  hypo- 
thetic application  of  the  long  feuds  about  the  rhap- 
sodoi,  is  the  one  sole  discoverable  bearing  that  even 
the  microscope  of  criticism  will  ever  detect  upon  the 
Homeric  questions.  But  really  for  any  useful  pur- 
pose, as  well  might  a  man  suggest,  that  by  possibility 
B,  great  poet  arose  in  Greece  900  years  B.  C,  that  his 
name  was  Nothos  Kibdelos  ;  that  he  lived  in  a  hole  ; 
and  that  he  forged  the  Iliad.  Well  then,  if  he  did, 
NotJios  is  Homer      And  that  is   simply  saying  that 


HOMER    AND    IflE    HOMEEID^.  133 

[Tomer  ought  to  be  spelled  by  a  different  arrangement 
of  letters.  We  see  no  possible  value  in  such  un- 
megining  conjectures.  Dean  Swift's  objection  to  the 
Iliad,  to  the  Greek  language,  and  to  all  ancient  history, 
being  obviously  a  modern  hoax,  inasmuch  as  Andro- 
mache was  evidently  a  corruption  of  Audi-ew  ^lackay, 
and  Alexander  the  Great,  only  the  war-cry  of  a  school- 
boy, ('  All  eggs  under  the  grate  ! ')  to  hide  their  egga 
on  the  approach  of  the  schoolmaster,  is  worth  a  thou- 
gaud  such  dull  objections.  The  single  fact  which  we 
know  about  these  preludes  is,  that  they  were  pure 
detached  generalities,  applicable  to  all  cases  indiffer- 
ently ;  aitaSoiTa,  irrelevant  as  an  old  Greek  author  calls 
them  ;  and,  to  prevent  any  misconstruction  of  his  mean- 
ing, as  if  that  musical  metaphor  were  applied  by  him 
to  the  mere  music  of  the  chanter,  he  adds  —  y.ai  ovScv 
7100?  TO  nqayfta  dijXoi ;  and  they  foreshow  nothing  at  all 
that  relates  to  the  subject.  Now,  from  this  little  notice 
of  their  character,  it  is  clear,  that,  like  doxologies,  or 
choral  burdens  or  refrains  to  songs,  they  were  not 
improvised  ;  not  impromptus  ;  they  were  stereotyped 
forms,  ready  for  all  occasions.  A  Jove  principium, 
says  Horace  :  mth  this  opening  a  man  could  never  go 
wrong,  let  the  coming  narative  point  which  way  it 
would.  And  Pindar  observes,  that  in  fact  all  the  Ho- 
meric rhapsodoi  did  draw  their  openings  from  Jove. 
Or  by  way  of  variety,  the  Muses  would  be  a  good  inau- 
guration, or  Apollo  ;  and,  as  some  man  rightly  sug- 
gests, in  a  great  city  like  Athens,  or  Ephesus,  the  local 
divinity.  Ha\'ing,  therefore,  this  dispensation  once  and 
forever  from  caring  for  the  subject  of  their  chants, 
the  chanters  ai'e  very  little  likely  to  have  forged  any- 
fcing,  e:;cept  a  bank  note.    Far  more  probable  it  is,  that 


134  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

their  preludes  were  sold,  like  queen's  heads,  at  so  much 
a  dozen,  leaving  time  to  the  chanters  for  clarifying 
their  voices  with  summat  cool,  and  to  the  harpers  for 
splicing  their  broken  harp-strings. 

But  the  Germans,  who  will  not  leave  this  bone  after 
all  its  fruitless  mumbling,  want  to  pick  a  quarrel  about 
the  time  when  these  rhapsodoi  began  to  exist.  What 
loes  that  signify  ?  We  will  quarrel  with  no  man 
'  about  the  age  of  Sir  Archy's  great-grandmother  ; ' 
and  yet,  on  consideration,  we  will.  If  they  will 
persist  in  making  a  row,  we  shall  try  to  rap  their 
knuckles.  They  say  that  their  rhapsodoi  were,  com- 
paratively with  Homer,  young  people.  We  say  that 
they  were  not.  And  now  that  our  blood  is  up,  we 
insist  upon  it  —  that  they  were  as  old  as  the  hills  ; 
twice  as  old  as  Homer  ;  three  times  as  old,  if  it  Avill 
vex  them  more.  We  cannot  say  that  we  know  this 
'  of  our  own  knowledge  ;  '  but  we  have  better  evi- 
dence for  it  than  any  which  they  can  have  against  it. 
In  a  certain  old  scholiast  on  Aristophanes,  there  is  a 
couplet  quoted  from  Hesiod  in  the  following  terms :  — 

'Ev  /frjAio  Tore  nocnov  lyio  y.ai  'OuyjQog  aoidoi, 
]\lsk7T0fiev,  sv  %'saQoie  I'uvoig  oaxpavreg  ieoi6i]v. 

'  Then  first  in  Delos  did  I  and  Homer,  two  bards, 
perform  as  musical  reciters,  laying  the  nexus  of  our 
poetry  in  original  hymns.'  He  means  to  tell  you 
that  they  were  none  of  your  beggarly  itinerant  rhap' 
iodoi,  who  hired  the  bellman  to  write  a  poetic  address 
for  them.  They  had  higher  pretensions  ;  they  killed 
their  own  mutton.  And  not  only  were  the  preluding 
hymns  their  own  copyrights,  (pirates  and  teggs  be 
off !)  but  also  they  had  a  meaning.     They  were  spe- 


HOilER    AXD    THE    HOMERID^.  135 

cially  connected  with,  the  epos,  or  narrative,  that  fol- 
lowed, and  not  (as  usually)  iiTelevant ;  so  that  they 
formed  the  transitional  passages  which  connected  one 
epos  with  another.  Plato  again,  who  stood  nearer  to 
Homer  than  any  one  of  us,  by  the  little  difference  of 
two  thousand,  two  hundred  and  sixty  years,  swears 
that  he  knows  Homer  to  have  been  a  rhapsodos. 

But  what  does  the  \vord  mean  ?  We  intend  to 
write  a  German  quarto  upon  this  question.  It  will  be 
adapted  to  the  use  of  posterity.  Meantime,  for  the 
present  flighty  generation,  whose  ear  must  be  power- 
fully tweaked  to  make  it  listen  through  a  single  page, 
we  shall  say  thus  much.  Strabo,  in  a  passage  which 
deserves  closer  attention  than  it  has  received,  explains 
why  it  is  that  poetry  in  general  was  called  aotdtj  or 
song.  This  name  having  been  established,  then  after- 
wards each  special  kind  of  poetry  bore  this  appella- 
tion, viz.,  aoide,  or  ode,  or  odia,  as  a  common  or 
generic  element  in  its  designation,  whilst  its  differen- 
tial element  w^as  prefixed.  Thus  goat-song,  or  trago- 
dia,  revel-song,  or  komodia,  were  designations  (derived 
from  their  occasional  origins)  of  tragedy  and  comedy, 
both  being  chanted.  On  the  same  principle,  rhap- 
sodia  shows  by  its  ending  that  it  is  poetry,  some  kind 
or  other  :  but  what  kind  ?  AVhy,  that  secret  is  con- 
fided to  the  keeping  of  rhaps.  And  what  may  rhaps 
mean  ?  Oh,  Sir,  you  are  not  to  know  all  for  nothing. 
Please  to  subscribe  for  a  copy  of  our  quarto.  For 
the  present,  however,  understand  that  rhapto  means 
to  sew  with  a  needle,  consequently  to  connect.  But, 
say  you,  all  poetry  must  have  some  connection  inter- 
nally at  least.  True,  but  this  circumslance  is  more 
ioticeable  and  emphatic  with  regard  to  long  narrative 


136  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMERID-S:. 

poems.  TTie  more  were  the  parts  to  be  connected, 
the  more  was  the  connection :  more  also  depended 
upon  it ;  and  it  caught  the  attention  more  forcibly. 
An  ode,  a  song,  a  hymn,  might  contain  a  single 
ebullition  of  feeling.  The  connection  might  lie  in 
the  very  rapture  and  passion,  Avithout  asking  for  any 
effort  on  the  poet's  part.  But,  in  any  epos  or  epic 
romance,  the  several  adventures,  and  parts  of  adven- 
tures, had  a  connecting  link  running  through  them, 
such  as  bespoke  design  and  effort  in  the  composer, 
viz.,  the  agency  of  a  single  hero,  or  of  a  predominant 
hero.  And  thus  rhapsodia,  or  linked  song,  indicated 
by  an  inevitable  accident  of  all  narrations,  that  it  was 
narrative  poetry.  And  a  rhapsodos  was  the  personal 
correlate  of  such  poetry  ;  he  was  the  man  that  chanted 
it. 

Well,  and  what  is  there  in  all  this  to  craze  a  man's 
brain,  to  make  him  smite  his  forehead  in  desperation., 
or  to  ball  up  his  huge  fist  in  defiance  ?  Yet  scarcely 
is  one  row  over  before  another  commences.  Pindar, 
it  seems,  has  noticed  the  rhapsodoi ;  and,  as  if  it 
were  not  enough  to  fight  furiously  about  the  explana- 
tion of  that  word,  a  second  course  of  fights  is  under- 
taken about  Pindar's  explanation  of  the  explanation. 
The  Pindaric  passages  are  two  ;  one  in  the  3d  Isth- 
mian, which  we  confess  makes  even  ourselves  (in 
Kentuck  phrase)  '  wolfy  about  the  shoulders,  i.  e. 
prurient  for  fighting.  Speaking  of  Homer,  Pindar, 
gays,  that  he  established  (i.  e.  raised  into  life  and 
celebrity)  all  modes  of  excellence,  xara  ^a^Sov.  It  is 
a  poet's  way  of  saying  that  Homer  did  this  as  a 
rhapsodos.  Rhaidos,  therefore,  is  used  as  the  sym- 
bol of  a  rhapsodos ;  it  is,  or  it  may  be  conceived  to 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERIC^.  137 

De,  his  instrument  for  connecting  tlie  narrative  poem 
which  gives  him  his  designation.  But  what  instru- 
ment ?  Is  it  a  large  darning-needle  for  sewing  the 
parts  together  ?  If  so,  Homer  will  want  a  thimble. 
No,  says  one  big  solemn  critic,  not  a  needle  :  none 
but  an  ass  would  think  of  such  a  thing.  Well,  old 
fellow,  what  is  it  then  ?  It  is,  says  he,  a  cane  —  a 
wand  —  a  rattan.  And  what  is  Homer  to  do  with  a 
cane  ?  Why,  understand,  that  when  his  singing  robes 
were  on,  (for  it  is  an  undoubted  fact,  that  the  ancient 
rhapsodos  not  only  chanted  in  full  pontificals,  but  had 
two  sets  of  robes,  crimso7i  when  he  chanted  the  Iliad, 
violet-colored  when  he  chanted  the  Odyssey,)  in  that 
case  the  rhapsodos  held  his  stick  in  his  right  hand. 
But  what  sort  of  a  stick  ?  Slick  is  a  large  genus, 
running  up  from  switch  to  cudgel,  from  rod  to  blud- 
geon. And  our  own  persuasion  is  —  that  this  stick 
or  pencil  of  wood  had  something  to  do  with  the  roll 
of  remembrances,  (not  perhaps  written  copies,  but 
mechanical  suggestions  for  recovering  the  main  suc- 
cession of  paragraphs,)  which  the  rhapsodos  used  as 
short-hand  notes  for  aiding  his  performance.  But  this 
is  a  subject  which  we  must  not  pursue. 

The  other  passage   of  Pindar  is  in  the  second  Ne- 

mean '06ev  mo  nui  'OfnjniSixi  ijiiTiTcDf  f'/rtoi)'  t«  noXk'  aoiSot 

ap/oiTai.^^  Of  a  certain  conquerer  at  the  games,  Pindaj 
says — that  he  took  his  beginning,  his  coup  d'essai, 
from  that  point,  viz.  Jove,  whence  the  Homeridae  take 
theirs  ;  alluding  to  the  prelusive  h)'mns.  Now,  what 
ieen\s  most  remarkable  to  us  in  this  passage  is,  the 
art  with  which  Pindar  identifies  the  three  classes 
of — 1.  HomeridcB  —  2.  Ajidoi  —  3.  Rhapsodoi.  The 
"vords  ya.iTwv  t;i»tov  aoi3oi   are   an   ingenious  way  of  ex- 


138  HOMElt    AND    THE    HOMEKIDJE. 

pressing  that  the  aoidoi  were  the  same  as  the  rhapso' 
dot.  Now,  where  Pindar  saw  no  essential  difference 
except  as  a  species  differs  from  a  genus,  it  is  nol 
likely  that  we  of  this  day  shall  detect  one.  At  all 
events,  it  is  certain  that  no  discussion  connected  with 
any  one  of  these  three  classes  has  thrown  any  lighi 
upon  the  main  question  as  to  the  integrity  of  tha 
Iliad.  The  aoidoi,  and  perhaps  the  rltapsodoi,  cer- 
tainly existed  in  the  days  of  Homer.  The  Homerida 
must  have  arisen  after  him :  but  when,  or  under  whal 
circumstances,  no  record  remains  to  say.  Only  the 
place  of  the  Homeridcs  is  known  :  it  was  Crete  :  and 
this  seems  to  connect  them  personally  with  Homer. 
But  all  is  too  obscm-e  to  penetrate  ;  and  in  fact  has 
not  been  penetrated. 


PART    III. 

VERDICT    ON    THE    HOMERIC    QUESTION. 

We  will  now,  reader,  endeavor  to  give  you  the 
heads  of  a  judgment,  or  verdict,  on  this  great  ques- 
tion, drawn  up  with  extreme  care  by  ourselves. 

I.  —  Rightly  was  it  said  by  Voss,  that  all  arguments 
worth  a  straw  in  this  matter  must  be  derived  from  the 
internal  structure  of  the  Iliad.  Let  us,  therefore,  hold 
an  inquest  upon  the  very  body  of  this  mxcmorable 
poem  ;  and,  first  of  all,  let  us  consider  its  outside 
characteristics,  its  style,  language,  metrical  structure. 

One  of  the  arguments  on  which  the  sceptics  rely  is 
this  —  a  thousand  years,  say  they,  make  a  severe  tria 
of  a  man's  stj-le.  What  is  very  good  Greek  at  one  enfi 
of  that  period  will  probably  be  unintelligible  Greek  at 
tiie  other.     And   throughout  this   period  it  will  have 


HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMEEID^.  l"d 

been  the  duty  of  the  rhapsodoi,  or  public  reciters,  to 
court  the  public  interest,  to  sustain  it,  to  humor  it,  by 
adapting  their  own  forms  of  delivery  to  the  existing 
state  of  language.  Well,  what  of  that  ?  Why  this  — 
that  under  so  many  repeated  alterations,  the  Iliad,  as 
we  now  have  it,  must  resemble  Sir  Francis  Drake's 
ship  —  repaii'ed  so  often,  that  not  a  spar  of  the  originsd 
vessel  remained. 

In  answer  to  this,  we  demand  —  why  a  thousand 
years  ?  Doubtless  there  was  that  space  between 
Homer  and  the  Christian  era.^o  But  why  particularly 
connect  the  Greek  language  with  the  Christian  era  ? 
In  this  artifice,  reader,  though  it  sounds  natural  to 
bring  forward  our  Christian  era  in  a  question  that  is 
partly  chronological,  already  there  is  bad  faith.  The 
Greek  language  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Chris- 
tian era.  Mark  this,  and  note  well  —  that  already,  in 
the  era  of  Pericles,  whose  chronological  locus  is  444 
years  B.  C,  the  Greek  language  had  reached  its  con- 
summation. And  by  that  word  we  mean  its  state  of 
rigid  fixation.  Will  any  man -deny  that  the  Greek  of 
Thucydides,  Sophocles,  Euripides,  who  were  in  the 
fullest  sense,  contemporaries  with  Pericles,  that  the 
Greek  of  Plato  or  Xenophon,  who  were  at  least  chil- 
den  of  some  growth  before  Pericles  died,  continued 
througli  all  after  ages  (in  the  etymological  sense  of  the 
word)  standard  Greek  ?  That  is,  it  was  standing 
Greek ;  Greek  which  stood  still,  and  never  after 
varied ;  so  that  eighteen  hundred  and  ninety  years 
after,  at  tho  final  capture  of  Constantinople  by  the 
Ottomans,  it  remained  the  true  familiar  Greek  of  edu- 
cated people ;  as  all  educated  people  talked ;  and 
removed  even  from  the  vulgar  Greek  of  the  mob  only 


140  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERIDJE. 

as  the  written  language  of  books  always  differs  from 
the  spoken  dialect  of  the  uneducated.  The  time, 
therefore,  for  which  we  have  to  account,  is  not  a  thou- 
sand years,  but  a  little  more  than  one-half  of  that  space. 
The  range,  therefore,  the  compass  of  time  within  which 
Homer  had  to  struggle  with  the  agencies  of  change, 
was  about  five  centuries  and  a  half. 

Now  the  tendency  to  change  is  different  in  different 
languages ;  both  from  internal  causes,  (mechanism, 
&c.)  and  from  causes  external  to  the  language,  laid 
in  the  varying  velocities  of  social  progress.  Secondly^ 
besides  this  varying  liability  to  change,  in  one  lan- 
guage as  compared  with  another,  there  is  also  a  vary- 
ing rate  of  change  in  the  same  language  compared 
with  itself.  Change  in  language  is  not,  as  in  many 
natural  products,  continuous  :  it  is  not  equable,  but 
eminently  by  fits  and  starts.  Probably  one  hundred 
and  fifty  years  at  stagnant  periods  of  history  do  less 
to  modify  a  language  than  forty  years  amidst  great 
struggles  of  intellect.  And  one  thing  we  must  insist 
on,  which  is,  that  between  Homer  and  Pisistratus,  the 
changes  in  Grecian  society,  likely  to  affect  the  lan- 
guage, were  not  to  be  compared,  for  power,  with  those 
acting  upon  English  society  ever  since  the  Reforma- 
tion. 

This  being  premised,  we  request  attention  to  tho 
following  case.  Precisely  on  this  very  summer  day 
so  bright  and  brilliant,  of  1841,  are  the  five  hundred 
years  completed  (less  by  forty-five  years  than  the  in- 
terspace between  Homer  and  Pisistratus)  since  Chau- 
cer was  a  stout  boy,  '  alive,'  and,  probably,  '  kicking : ' 
for  he  was  fined,  about  1341,  for  kicking  a  Franciscan 
friai  in  Fleet-street ;  though  Ritson  er  roneously  assert« 


JIOMEK    AND    IHE    HOilEBID^.  141 

that  the  story  was  a  'hum,'  invented  by  Chatter  ton. 
Now,  what  is  the  character  of  Chaucer's  diction  ?  A 
great  delusion  exists  on  that  point.  Some  ninety  or 
one  hundi'ed  words  that  are  now  obsolete,  certainly  not 
many  more,  vein  the  whole  surface  of  Chaucer  ;  and 
thus  a  J9?'i»iayacie  impression  is  conveyed  that  Chau- 
cer is  difficult  to  understand  :  whereas  a  very  slight 
practice,  familiarizes  his  language.  The  Canterbury 
Tales  were  not  made  public  until  1380  ;  but  the  com- 
position was  certainly  proceeding  between  1350  and 
1380;  and  before  1360  some  considerable  parts  were 
published.  Here  we  have  a  space  greater  by  thii-ty- 
five  years,  than  that  between  Homer  and  Pisistratus. 
And  observe  —  had  Chaucer's  Tales  the  benefit  of  an 
oral  recitation,  were  they  assisted  to  the  understanding 
by  the  pauses  in  one  place,  the  hm-rying  and  crowding 
of  important  words  at  another,  and  by  the  proper  dis- 
tribution of  emphasis  everywhere,  —  (all  which,  though 
impracticable  in  regular  singing,  is  well  enough  ac- 
complished in  a  chant,  or  Xoyog  fifut'Atausiog,)  there  is  no 
man,  however  unfamiliar  with  old  English,  but  might 
be  made  to  go  along  with,  the  movement  of  his  admir- 
able tales,  though  he  might  still  remain  at  a  loss  for 
the  meaning  of  insulated  words. 

Not  Chaucer  himself,  however,  but  that  model  of 
language  which.  Chaucer  ridicules  and  parodies,  as  be- 
coming obsolete  in  his  days,  the  rhyme  of  Sir  Thopas, 
—  a  model  which  may  be  safely  held  to  represent  the 
language  of  the  two  centuries  previous,  —  is  the  point 
of  appeal.  Sir  Thopas  is  clearly  a  parody  of  the  Met- 
rical Romances.  Some  of  those  hitherto  published  by 
Ritson,  &c.,  are  not  older  than  Chaucer  ;  but  some 
iscend  much  higher,  and  may  be  referred  to  1200,  or 


1^2  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEEIDJE. 

periiaps  earlier.  Date  tliem  from  1240,  and  that 
places  a  period  of  six  centuries  complete  between  our- 
selves and  them.  Notwithstanding  which,  the  greater 
part  of  the  Metrical  Romances,  when  aided  by  the 
connection  of  events  narrated,  or  when  impassioned, 
remain  perfectly  intelligible  to  this  hour 

*  What  for  labour,  and  what  for  faint. 
Sir  Bevis  was  well  nigh  attaint.' 

This  is  a  couplet  from  Bevis,  of  Southampton ;  and 
another  we  will  quote  from  the  romance  of  Sir  Ga- 
waine  and  Sir  Ywaiue.  In  a  vast  forest.  Sir  G.,  by 
striking  a  shield  suspended  to  a  tree,  had  caused  a 
dreadful  storm  to  succeed  ;  which,  subsiding,  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  gloomy  apparition  of  a  mailed  knight,  who 
claims  the  forest  for  his  own,  taxes  Sir  Gawaine  with 
having  intruded  on  his  domain,  and  concludes  a  tissue 
of  complaints  with  saying  that  he  had 

♦  With  weathers  waken'd  him  of  rest. 
And  done  him  wrong  in  his  forest. ' 

Now  these  two  casual  recollections  well  and  fairly 
lepresent  the  general  current  of  the  language  ;  not 
certainly  what  would  now  be  written,  but  what  is  per- 
fectly luminous  from  the  context.  At  present,  for 
instance,  famt  is  an  adjective  ;  but  the  context  and  the 
corresponding  word  labour,  easily  teach  the  reader  that 
it  here  means  faintness.  So,  again,  '  weather  '  is  liot 
aow  used  for  storms;  but  it  is  so  used  by  a  writer  as 
late  as  Lord  Bacon,  and  yet  survives  in  such  words  as 
weather-beaten,'  '  weather-stained.' 

Now,  we  say  that  the  interval  of  time  betAvecn  these 
romances  and  ourselves,  is  greater  than  between  Ho« 
mer  and  the  age  of  Pericles.     We  say,  also,  that  the 


HOMER    AXD    THE    HOJIERID^.  143 

constant  succession  of  metrical  writers  connecting  the 
time  of  Homer  with  that  of  Pericles,  such  as  the  au- 
thors of  the  '  Nostoi,'  (or  Memorahle  Returns  home- 
ward from  Troy,)  of  the  '  Cypria,'  of  the  many  Cycli- 
cal poems,  nest  of  the  Lyric  poets,  a  list  closing  with 
Pindar,  in  immediate  succession  to  whom,  and  through 
most  of  his  life  strictly  a  contemporary  with  Pindar, 
comes  -^schylus,  close  upon  whose  heels  follow  the 
whole  cluster  of  dramatic  poets,  who  glorified  the 
life  of  Pericles  —  this  apparently  continuous  series  of 
verse  writers,  without  the  interposition  of  a  single 
prose  writer,  would  inevitably  have  the  effect  of  keep- 
ing alive  the  poetic  forms  and  choice  of  words,  in  a 
degree  not  so  reasonably  to  be  expected,  under  any 
interrupted  succession.  Our  Chaucer  died  an  old  man, 
above  seventy,  in  the  year  1400  ;  that  is,  in  the  con- 
cluding year  of  the  fourteenth  century.  The  next 
century,  that  is,  the  fifteenth,  was  occupied  in  much 
of  its  latter  half  by  the  civil  wars  of  the  two  Roses, 
which  threw  back  the  development  of  the  English 
literature,  and  tended  to  disturb  the  fluent  transmission 
of  Chaucer's  and  Gower's  diction.  The  tumultuous 
•century  which  came  next,  viz.  the  sixteenth,  the  former 
naif  of  which  was  filled  with  the  Reformation,  caused 
a  prodigious  fermentation  and  expansion  of  the  English 
intellect.  But  such  convulsions  are  very  nnfavorable  to 
the  steady  conservation  of  language,  and  of  everything 
?lse  depending  upon  usage.  Now,  in  Grecian  history, 
*here  are  no  corresponding  agitations  of  society  ;  the 
currents  of  tradition  seem  to  flow  downwards,  without 
meeting  anything  to  ripple  ■:h3ir  surface.  It  is  true 
Uiat  the  great  Persian  war  did  agitate  Greece  pro- 
foundly, and,   by  combining   the    Greeks   from  every 


144  HOMEE    AND    THE    HOMEEIDJB. 

quarter  in  large  masses,  this  memorable  war  must 
have  given  a  powerful  shock  to  the  stagnant  ideaa 
inherited  from  antiquity.  But,  as  this  respects  Homer, 
observe  how  thoroughly  its  operation  is  defeated  :  for 
the  outrageous  conflagration  of  Sardis  occurred  about 
500  B.  C.  ;  and  the  final  events  of  the  war,  Salamis, 
Platoea,  &c.  occurred  in  480  B.  C.  But  already,  by  Pi- 
eistratus,  whose  locus  is  fifty  jears  before  the  affair  of 
Sardis,  Homer  had  been  revised  and  settled,  and  (as 
one  might  express  it)  stereotyped.  Consequently,  the 
chief  political  revolution  afi"ecting  Greece  collectively, 
if  you  except  the  Dorian  migrations,  &c.,  between 
Homer  and  Pericles,  was  intercepted  from  all  possi- 
bility of  affecting  the  Homeric  diction,  &c.,  by  the 
seasonable  authentication  of  the  entire  Homeric  text 
under  the  seal  and  imprimatur  of  Pisistratus.  Here 
is  the  old  physical  guarantee  urged  by  uEsop's  lamb 
versus  wolf,  that  Homer's  text  could  not  have  been 
reached  by  any  influence,  direct  or  oblique,  from  the 
greatest  of  the  post-Homeric  convulsions.  It  would  be 
the  old  miracle  of  the  Greek  proverb  ('^tfiuj  Trorauwr,  &c.) 
which  adopted  the  reflux  of  rivers  towai'ds  their  foun- 
tains as  the  liveliest  type  of  the  impossible. 

There  is  also  a  philosophic  reason,  why  the  range 
of  diction  in  Chaucer  should  be  much  wider,  and 
liable  to  greater  changes,  than  that  of  Homer.  Revise 
those  parts  of  Chaucer  which  at  this  day  are  most 
obscure,  and  it  will  uniformly  be  found  that  they  are 
the  subjective  sections  of  his  poetry  ;  those,  for  instance, 
in  which  he  is  elaborately  decomposing  a  character. 
A  character  is  a  subtle  fugacious  essence  which  does, 
or  does  not,  exist,  according  to  the  capacity  of  the 
eye  which  is  applied  to  it.     In  Homer's  age,  no  such 


HOMEE    AXD    THE    HOMERID^.  145 

meditative  difierences  were  perceived.  All  is  ohjectivc 
in  the  descriptions,  and  external.  And  in  those  casea 
where  the  mind  or  its  affections  must  be  noticed, 
ah\dys  it  is  by  the  broad  distinctions  of  anger,  fear, 
love,  hatred,  without  any  vestige  of  a  sense  for  the 
more  delicate  interblendings  or  nuances  of  such  quali- 
ties. But  a  language  built  upon  these  elementary 
distinctions  is  necessarily  more  durable  than  another, 
which,  applying  itself  to  the  subtler  phenomena  of 
auman  nature,  exactly  in  that  proportion  applies  itself 
to  what  is  capable  of  being  variously  viewed,  oi 
viewed  in  various  combinations,  as  society  shifts  its 
aspects. 

The  result  from  all  this  is,  that,  throughout  the 
four  hundred  and  forty-five  years  from  Homer  to 
Pisistratus,  the  diction  even  of  real  life  would  not 
have  suffered  so  much  alteration,  as  in  modern  times 
it  would  be  likely  to  do  witlain  some  single  centuries. 
But  with  respect  to  poetry,  the  result  is  stronger. 

The  diction  of  poetry  is  everywhere  a  privileged 
diction.  The  antique  or  scriptural  language  is  ever; 
where  affected  in  serious  or  impassioned  poetry.  So 
that  no  call  would  arise  from  modern  adaptations,  until 
the  language  had  grown  unintelligible.  Nor  would 
that  avail  to  raise  such  a  call.  The  separate  non- 
intelligibility  of  a  word  would  cause  no  difficulty, 
«vhUst  it  would  give  the  gi'ace  of  antique  coloring. 
For  a  word  which  is  separately  obscure  is  not  so 
in  nexu.  Suppose,  reader,  we  were  to  ask  you  the 
meaning  of  the  English  word  diode,  you  might  be  a 
little  puzzled.  Yet  it  is  an  honest  and  once  an  indus- 
trious word,  though  now  retired  from  business  ;  and 
it  stands  in  om-  authorized  translation  of  the  Bible : 
10 


1 46  HOMEE   A.XD    THE    HOMEKIDiE. 

where,  if  you  had  chanced  to  meet  it  171  toco,  you 

would  easily  have  collected  from  the  context  that  it 
was  the  past  tense  of  chide.  Again,  what  Southern 
reader  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  ever  failed  to  gather  the 
full  sense  of  the  Scottish  dialect  -*  or  what  Scotchman 
to  gather  the  sense  of  the  Irish  dialect  so  plentifully 
strewed  in  modern  tales  ?  or  what  landsman  to  gather 
the  sense  of  the  marine  dialect  in  our  nautical  novels  ? 
In  all  such  cases,  the  passion,  the  animation  and 
movement  of  the  feeling,  very  often  the  logic,  as  they 
arise  from  the  context,  carry  you  fluently  along  with 
the  meaning. 

Equating,  therefore,  the  sleeping  state  of  early 
Greece  mth  the  stirring  progress  of  modern  Christian 
lands,  we  come  to  this  conclusion,  that  Homer,  the 
genuine  unaltered  Homer,  would  not,  hy  all  likelihood, 
be  more  archaic  in  his  coloring  of  style  than  the 
Froissart  of  Lord  Berners  is  to  ourselves.  That  is,  we 
equate  four  hundred  and  forty-five  early  Greek  years 
with  the  last  three  hundred  and  twenty  English  years. 
But  we  will  concede  something  more.  The  common 
English  translation  of  the  long  prose  romance,  called 
Mort  d' Arthur,  was  composed,  we  believe,  about  the 
year  1480.  This  will  therefore  be  three  hundred  and 
sixty  years  old.  Now,  both  Lord  Berners  and  the  Mort 
d' Arthur,  are  as  intelligible  as  this  morning's  newspaper 
in  June,  1841.  And  one  proof  that  they  are  so  is,  that 
both  works  have  been  reprinted  verbatim  et  literatim 
in  this  generation  for  popular  use.  Something  vene- 
rable and  solemn  there  is  in  both  these  works,  as  again 
m  the  Paston  Letters,  which  are  hard  upon  four  hun* 
died  years  old,  but  no  shadow  of  difficulty. 

B.  Homer's   Lei>is.  —  Now,  reader,  having   stated 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEKID^.  147 

by  practical  examples,  wliat  effect  was  to  have  been 
anticipated  from  age,  let  us  next  inquire  what  effect 
has  laken  place.  Observe  the  monstrous  dishonesty  of 
these  German  critics.  What  if  a  man  should  argue 
thus  :  '  This  helmet  never  can  have  descended  from 
Mambrino ;  for,  if  it  had,  there  would  have  been 
weather-stains,  cracks,  dints  of  swords,'  &c.  To 
which  it  is  replied  :  —  '  Doubtless  ;  but  have  you 
looked  to  see  if  there  are  not  such  marks  of  antiq- 
uity ? '  Would  you  not  think  the  disparager  of  the 
helmet  worthy  of  the  treadmill,  if  it  should  turn  out 
that  he  had  never  troubled  himself  to  examine  it  ? 
These  Germans  argue  a  priori,  that,  upon  certain 
natural  causes,  there  would  arise  a  temptation  to  the 
Homeric  chanters  for  adapting  the  diction  to  their 
audience.  Conditionally  we  grant  this  —  that  is,  if  a 
deep  night  of  darkness  fell  suddenly  upon  the  lan- 
guage. But  our  answer  is,  that  this  condition  never 
would  be  realized  ;  and  that  a  solemnizing  twilight  is 
the  very  utmost  which  could  ever  steal  over  Homer's 
diction.  Meantime,  where  is  the  sense  of  calculating 
a  priori  what  would  be  likeli/  to  happen,  when  by 
simply  opening  a  book,  we  can  see  what  has  hap- 
pened ?  These  Germans  talk  as  if  the  Homer  we 
have  now,  spoke  exactly  such  Greek  as  Euripides  and 
Sophocles.  Or,  if  some  slight  differences  are  admit- 
ted, as  though  these  were  really  too  inconsiderable 
to  meet  the  known  operation  of  chance  and  change 
vhrough  four  and  a  half  centuries.  To  hear  them,  you 
tnust  suppose  that  Homer  differed  little  more  from  the 
golden  writers  of  Greece  than  as  Pope's  diction  differs 
from  that  of  1841.  W^ho  now  says,  writ  for  wrote 
and    for    written  7     Who    says  'tis  and    'twas    since 


148  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEBID^. 

^ueen  Anne's  reign  ?  There  are  not  twelve  consecu- 
tive lines  in  Pope,  Swift,  Addison,  which  will  not 
be  found  marked  by  such  slight  peculiarities  of  their 
age.  Ye*,  their  general  agreement  with  ourselves  is 
BO  striking,  that  the  difficulty  is  to  detect  the  differ- 
ences. Now,  if  Homer  were  in  that  condition  relating 
to  the  age  of  Pericles  —  were  it  even  that  he  exhibited 
QO  more  sombre  hues  than  those  which  ^schylus 
exhibits,  as  compared  with  his  younger  brothers  of  the 
drama,  we  should  grant  at  once  that  a  case  is  made 
out,  calling  for  some  explanation.  There  has  been  a 
change.  There  is  something  to  account  for.  Some- 
body has  been  '  doctoring  '  this  man,  would  be  the 
inference.  But  how  stands  the  truth  ?  Why,  reader, 
the  Homeric  lexis  is  so  thoroughly  peculiar  and  indi- 
vidual, that  it  requires  a  separate  lexicon ;  and  if  all 
men  do  not  use  a  separate  lexicon,  it  is  only  because  that 
particular  vocabulary  has  been  digested  into  the  series 
of  general  vocabularies.  Pierce  Plowman  is  not  half 
so  unlike  in  diction  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  as  is  Homer  to 
Euripides.  And,  instead  of  simply  accounting  for  the 
time  elapsed,  and  fairly  answering  to  the  reasonable 
attrition  of  that  time,  the  Homeric  diction  is  sufficient 
to  account  for  three  such  spaces.  What  would  the 
infidels  have  ?  Homer,  they  say,  is  an  old  —  old  — 
very  old  man,  whose  trembling  limbs  have  borne  him  to 
your  door  ;  and,  therefore  —  what  ?  Why,  he  ought 
10  look  very  old  indeed.  Well,  good  men,  he  does  look 
very  old  indeed.  He  ought,  they  say,  to  be  covered 
with  lichens  and  ivy.  Well,  he  is  covered  with  lichens 
fcnd  ivy.  And  sure  we  are,  that  few  people  will  un- 
dertake to  know  how  *i  man  looks,  when  he  is  five 
Qundrod  years  old,  by  comparison  with  himself  at  foui 


HOMEK    AXD    THE    HOMERID^.  149 

aundred.  Suffice  it  here  to  say,  for  tlie  benefit  of  the 
unlearned,  that  not  one  of  our  own  earliest  writers, 
hardly  Thomas  of  Ercildoune,  has  more  of  peculiar 
antique  words  in  his  vocabulary  than  Homer. 

C.  Homer's  Metre.  —  In  this  case,  the  Germans 
themselves  admit  the  extraordinary  character  of  the 
Homeric  rhythmus.  '  How  free,  how  spirited  in  its 
motion  ! '  they  all  exclaim  ;  '  how  characteristically  his 
own ! '  Well,  now,  did  the  father  of  sophisms  ever 
hear  of  such  stuff  as  this,  when  you  connect  it  with 
what  these  Germans  say  elsewhere  ?  '  As  well  might 
a  woman  say,  that  you  had  broken  her  china  cups,  but 
that  you  had  artfully  contrived  to  preserve  the  original 
Chinese  designs.  How  could  you  preserve  the  form  or 
surface  if  you  destroy  the  substance  ?  And,  if  these 
imaginary  adapters  of  Homer  modernized  his  whole 
diction,  how  could  they  preserve  his  metrical  effects  ? 
With  the  peculiar  word  or  idiom  would  vanish  the 
peculiar  prosody.  Even  a  single  word  is  not  easily 
replaced  by  another  having  the  same  sense,  the  same 
number  of  syllables,  and  in  each  syllable  the  same 
metrical  quantity  ;  but  how  immeasui-ably  more  diffi- 
cult is  this,  when  the  requisition  is  for  a  whole  sen- 
tence or  clause  having  the  same  sense  in  the  same 
number  of  syllables  and  the  same  prosody  ?  Why,  a 
man  would  not  doctor  three  lines  in  a  century  under 
such  intolerable  conditions.  And,  at  the  end  of  his 
labor,  like  Addison's  small  poet,  who  worked  for  years 
upon  the  name  of  '  Mary  Bohun,'  in  order  to  bind  its 
stubborn  letters  within  the  hoop-ring  of  an  anagram, 
he  would  probably  fail,  and  go  mad  into  the  bargain, 
[f  the  metre  is  characteristically  Homeric,  as  say  these 
nfidels,  then  is  the  present  text,  (so  inextricably  co- 


150  HOMEK    AXD    THE    HOMEBID^. 

adimated  with  the  metre,)  upon  their  own  showing,  the 
good  old  Homeric  text  —  and  no  mistake. 

But,  reader,  the  Homeric  metre  is  not  truly  de- 
scribed by  these  men.  It  is  certainly  kenapeck,  to  use  a 
good  old  English  word  —  that  is  to  say,  recognizable  ; 
you  challenge  it  for  Homer's  whenever  you  meet  it. 
Characteristic  it  is,  but  not  exactly  for  the  reason  they 
assign.  The  fact  is,  though  flowing  and  lively,  it 
betrays  the  immaturity  of  the  metrical  art.  Those 
constraints,  fi*om  which  the  Germans  praise  its  free- 
dom, are  the  constraints  of  exquisite  art.  This  is  a 
difficult  subject;  for,  in  our  own  literature,  the  true 
science  of  metrical  efiects  has  not  belonged  to  our  later 
poets,  but  to  the  elder.  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  Milton, 
are  the  great  masters  of  exquisite  versification.  And 
Waller,  who  was  idly  reputed  to  have  refined  our 
metre,  was  a  mere  trickster,  having  a  single  tune 
moving  in  his  imagination,  without  compass  and  with- 
out variety.  Chaucer,  also,  whom  Dryden  in  this  point 
so  thoroughly  misunderstood,  was  undoubtedly  a  most 
elaborate  master  of  metre,  as  will  appear  when  we 
aave  a  really  good  edition  of  him.  But  in  the  Pagan 
literature  this  was  otherwise.  We  see  in  the  Roman 
poets  that,  precisely  as  they  were  antique,  they  were 
careless,  or  at  least  very  inartificial  in  the  management 
of  their  metre.  Thus  Lucilius,  Ennius,  even  Lucre- 
tius, leave  a  class  of  faults  in  their  verse,  from  which 
Virgil  would  have  revolted.  And  the  very  same  class 
of  faults  is  found  in  Homer.  But  though  faults  as 
regards  severe  art,  they  are  in  the  very  spirit  of  naivete 
or  picturesque  naturalness,  and  wear  the  stamp  of  a 
primiti^'e  age  —  artless  and  inexperienced. 

This  article  would  require  a  volume.     But  we  wiL 


ho:mer  and  the  homeridjE.  151 

content  ourselves  with  one  illustration.  Every  scholar 
is  aware  of  the  miserable  effect  produced  where  there 
is  no  cceswa,  in  that  sense  of  the  word  ccesura  which 
means  the  interlocking  of  the  several  feet  into  the 
several  words.  Thus,  imagine  a  line  like  this  :  — 
'  Urbem  Komam  prirao  condit  Romulus  auno.' 

Here,  the  six  feet  of  the  hexameter  are  separately 
made  out  by  six  several  words.  Each  word  is  a  foot ; 
and  no  foot  interlocks  into  another.  So  that  there  is 
no  ccesura.  Yet  even  that  is  not  the  worst  fault  of  the 
line.  The  other  and  more  destructive  is  —  the  coinci- 
dence of  the  ictus,  or  emphasis,  with  the  first  syllable 
of  every  foot. 

Now  in  Homer  we  see  both  faults  repeatedly.  Thus, 
to  express  the  thundering  pace  with  which  a  heavy  stone 
comes  trundling  back  from  an  eminence,  he  says :  — 

'  Autis  epeita  pedonde  kulindeto  laiis  anaides.' 

Here  there  is  the  shocking  fault,  to  any  metrical  ear, 
of  making  the  emphasis  fiill  regularly  on  the  first  syl- 
lable, which  in  effect  obliterates  all  the  benefit  of  the 
cassura. 

Now,  Virgil  has  not  one  such  line  in  all  his  works, 
nor  could  have  endured  such  a  line.  In  that  verse 
expressing  the  gallop  or  the  caracoling  of  a  horse,  he 
also  has  five  dactyles  — 

'  Quadrupedante  putrem  sonitu  quatit  ungula  campum.' 

But  he  takes  care  to  distribute  the  accents  properly,  on 
which  so  much  even  of  the  ancient  versification  de- 
pended :  except  in  the  two  last  feet,  the  emphasis  of 
Virgil's  line  never  coincides  with  the  first  syllable  of 
the  foot.     Homer,  it  will   be  said,  wished  to  express 


152  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERID^. 

naimetically  the  rolling,  thundering,  leaping  motion  of 
the  stone.  True,  but  so  did  Virgil  wish  to  express  the 
thundering  gallop  of  the  horse,  in  wliich  the  beats  of 
the  hoofs  return  with  regular  intervals.  Each  sought 
for  a  picturesque  effect  —  each  adopted  a  dactylic 
structure  :  but  to  any  man  who  has  studied  this  sub- 
ject, we  need  not  say,  that  picturesqueness,  like  any 
other  effect,  must  be  subordinated  to  a  higher  law  of 
beauty.  Whence,  indeed,  it  is  that  the  very  limits  of 
imitation  arise  for  every  art,  sculpture,  painting,  &c., 
indicating  what  it  ought  to  imitate,  and  what  it  ought 
not  to  imitate.  And  unless  regard  is  had  to  such  higher 
restraints,  metrical  effects  become  as  silly  and  childish 
as  the  musical  effects  in  Kotzwarra's  Battle  of  Prague, 
with  its  ridiculous  attempts  to  mimic  the  firing  of  can- 
non, groans  of  the  wounded,  &;c.,  instead  of  involving 
the  passion  of  a  battle  in  the  agitation  of  the  music. 

These  rudenesses  of  art,  however,  are  generally 
found  in  its  early  stages.  And  we  are  satisfied  that,  as 
art  advanced,  these  defects  must  have  been  felt  for  such ; 
so  that,  had  any  license  of  improvement  existed,  they 
would  have  been  removed.  That  they  were  left  un- 
vOuched  in  the  ages  of  the  great  lyrical  masters,  when 
metre  was  so  scientifically  understood,  is  a  strong 
argument  that  Homer  was  sacred  from  all  tampering. 
Over  the  whole  field  of  the  Homeric  versification,  both 
for  its  quality  of  faults  and  its  quality  of  merits,  lies 
diffused  this  capital  truth  —  that  no  opening  existed 
for  the  correction,  in  any  age  after  the  perception  of 
a  fault  (that  is,  when  the  temptation  to  correct)  could 
tirst  have  arisen. 

D.  The  Homeric  Formulce.  —  Here  is  another  conn-' 
.ersign  for  the  validity  of  our  present  Homeric  text. 


nOMEK    AND    THE    HOMEKIDJE.  153 

In  our  own  metrical  romances,  or  -wlierever  a  poem  19 
meant  not  for  readers  but  for  chanters  and  oral  recit- 
ers, these  formulce,  to  meet  the  same  recurring  cases, 
exist  by  scores.  Thus  every  woman  who  happens  to 
be  young,  is  described  as  '  so  bright  of  ble,'  or  com- 
plexion :  always  a  man  goes  '  the  moimtenance  of  a 
mile,'  before  he  overtakes  or  is  overtaken.  And  so  on 
through  a  vast  bead-roll  of  cases.  In  the  same  spirit 
Homer  has  his  eternal  tov  d'  o(J  vnoSQa  idwr,  or  tnca  mioo' 

sfTa  7inoa)fjSa,  ov  Toy  d'  anauei^oiiivog  n(ioae(pr,,  &C. 

Now  these  again,  under  any  refining  spirit  of  criti- 
cism, at  liberty  to  act  freely,  are  characteristics  that 
would  have  disappeared.  Not  that  they  are  faults : 
on  the  contrary,  to  a  reader  of  sensibility,  such  recur- 
rences wear  an  aspect  of  childlike  simplicity,  beauti- 
fully recalling  the  features  of  Homer's  primitive  age. 
But  they  would  have  appeared  faults  to  all  common- 
place critics  in  literary  ages. 

We  say,  therefore,  that  first,  the  Diction  of  the  Iliad, 
(B  ;)  secondly,  the  Metre  of  the  Iliad,  (C  ;)  thirdly,  the 
Formulae  and  recurring  Clauses  of  the  Iliad,  (D;)  — 
all  present  us  with  so  many  separate  attestations  to  the 
purity  of  the  Homeric  text  from  any  considerable 
interference.  For  every  one  of  these  would  have 
given  way  to  the  '  Adapters,'  had  any  such  people 
operated  upon  Homer. 

n.  —  The  first  class  of  arguments,  therefore,  for  the 
sanity  of  the  existing  Homer,  is  derived  from  language. 
Oui*  second  argument  we  derive  from  the  ideality 
OF  Achilles.  This  we  owe  to  a  suggestion  of  Mr. 
Wordsworth's.  Once,  when  we  observed  to  him,  that 
of  in'.agination,  in  his  own  sense,  we  saw  no  instance 


154  HOMi:E   AN1>    THE    HOMEKID^. 

in  the  Iliad,  lie  replied  — '  Yes  :  there  is  the  charactei 
of  Achilles  ;  this  is  imaginative,  in  the  same  sense  as 
Ariosto's  Angelica.'  Character  is  not  properly  the 
word :  nor  was  it  what  Mr.  Wordsworth  meant.  It  is 
an  idealized  conception.  The  excessive  beauty  of 
Angelica,  for  instance,  robs  the  Paladins  of  their  wits  ; 
draws  anchorites  into  guilt  ;  tempts  the  baptized  into 
mortal  feud ;  summons  the  unbaptized  to  war ;  brings 
nations  together  from  the  ends  of  the  earth.  And  so, 
with  different  but  analogous  effects,  the  very  perfection 
of  courage,  beauty,  strength,  speed,  skill  of  eye,  of 
voice,  and  all  personal  accomplishments,  are  embodied 
in  the  son  of  Peleus.  He  has  the  same  supremacy  in 
modes  of  courtesy,  and  doubtless,  according  to  the 
poet's  conception,  in  virtue.  In  fact,  the  astonishing 
blunder  which  Horace  made  in  deciphering  his  Ho- 
meric portrait,  gives  the  best  memorandum  for  re- 
calling the  real  points  of  his  most  self-commanding 
character :  — 

•  Impiger,  iracundus,  inexorabilis,  acer, 
Jura  negat  sibi  nata,  nihil  non  arrogat  arniis.' 

Was  that  man  iracundus,  who,  in  the  very  opening 
of  the  Iliad,  makes  his  anger  bend  under  the  most  brutal 
Insult  to  the  public  welfare  ?  When  two  people  quar- 
rel, it  is  too  commonly  the  unfair  award  of  careless 
bystanders,  that  '  one  is  as  bad  as  the  other  ;  '  whilst 
generally  it  happens  that  one  of  the  parties  is  but 
the  respondent  in  a  quarrel  originated  by  the  other. 
Homer  says  of  the  two  chiefs,  SiaaTijtijv  tQiaarrt,  they 
stood  aloof  in  feud  ;  but  what  was  the  nature  of  the 
feud  ?  Agamemnon  had  inflicted  upon  Achilles,  him- 
self a  king:  and   the   most  brilliant  chieftain  of  the 


HOMEE    AST)    THE    HOHEEID^.  lOO 

confederate  aiiny,  the  very  foulest  outrage  (matter 
and  manner)  that  can  be  imagined.  Because  his  own 
brutality  to  a  priest  of  Apollo  had  caused  a  pestilence, 
and  he  finds  that  he  must  resign  this  priest's  daughter, 
he  declares  that  he  will  indemnify  himself  by  seizing 
a  female  captive  from  the  tents  of  Achilles.  Why  of 
Achilles  more  than  of  any  other  man?  Color  of 
right,  or  any  relation  betv/een  his  loss  and  his  redress, 
this  brutal  Agamemnon  does  not  offer  by  pretence 
But  he  actually  executes  his  threat.  Nor  does  he 
ever  atone  for  it.  Since  his  returning  Briseis,  without 
disavowing  his  right  to  have  seized  her,  is  wide  of  the 
whole  point  at  issue.  Now,  under  what  show  of  com- 
m.on  sense  can  that  man  be  called  iracundus,  who 
calmly  submits  to  such  an  indignity  as  this  ?  Or,  is 
that  man  inexorahilis,  who  sacrifices  to  the  tears  and 
gray  hairs  of  Priam,  his  own  meditated  revenge, 
giving  back  the  body  of  the  enemy  who  had  robbed 
him  of  his  dearest  friend  ?  Or  is  there  any  gleam  of 
truth  in  saying  that  jura  negat  sibi  nata,  when  of  all 
the  heroes  in  the  Iliad,  he  is  the  most  punctiliously 
coiu'teous,  the  most  ceremonious  in  his  religious  ob- 
servances, and  the  one  who  most  cultivated  the  arts 
of  peace  ?  Or  is  that  man  the  violent  defier  of  all 
law  and  religion,  who  submits  with  so  pathetic  a  resig- 
nation to  the  doom  of  early  death  ? 

*  Enougli,  I  know  my  fate  —  to  die  ;  to  see  no  more 
My  much-loved  parents,  or  my  native  ehore.' 

Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  threatened  to  tickle  that 
man  who  had  libelled  his  hero  Alexander.  But  Alex- 
ander himself  would  have  tickled  master  Horace  for 
this  gross  libel  on  Achilles,  if  they  had  happened  to 
•e  contemporaries. 


i56  HOMER    AND    THE    B.0M.ER1DJB. 

The  character,  in  short,  of  the  matchless  Pelides, 
Qas  ai.  ideal  finish  and  a  divinity  about  it,  which 
argue,  that  it  never  could  have  been  a  fiction  or  a 
gradual  accumulation  from  successive  touches.  It 
was  raised  by  a  single  flash  of  creative  imagination , 
it  was  a  reality  seen  through  the  harmonizing  abstrac- 
tions of  two  centuries  ^-^ ;  and  it  is  in  itself  a  great 
unity,  which  penetrates  every  section  where  it  comes 
forward,  with  an  identification  of  these  several  parts  as 
the  work  of  one  man. 

III.  —  Another  powerful  guarantee  of  the  absolute 
integrity  which  belongs  to  the  Iliad,  lies  in  the  Ionic 
forms  of  language,  combined  everywhere  (as  Plato 
remarks)  with  Ionic  forms  of  life.  Homer  had  seen 
the  modes  of  Dorian  life,  as  in  many  cities  of  Crete, 
But  his  heart  turned  habitually  to  the  Ionian  life  of 
his  infancy.  Here  the  man  who  builds  on  pretences 
of  recasting,  &c.,  will  find  himself  in  this  dilemma. 
If,  in  order  to  account  for  the  poem  still  retaining  its 
Ionic  dress,  which  must  have  been  afi'ected  by  any 
serious  attempts  at  modernizing  it,  he  should  argue 
that  the  Ionic  dialect,  though  not  used  on  the  conti- 
nent, continued  to  be  perfectly  intelligible  ;  then,  our 
good  Sir,  what  call  for  recasting  it  ?  Nobody  sup- 
poses that  an  antique  form  of  language  would  be 
objectionable  per  se,  or  that  it  would  be  other  than 
solemn  and  religious  in  its  effect,  so  long  as  it  con- 
tinued to  be  intelligible.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he 
argues  that  it  must  gradually  have  grown  unintelligible 
or  less  intelligible,  (for  tliat  the  Ionic  of  Herodotus, 
.n  the  age  of  Pericles,  was  very  difi'erent  from  the 
Homeric,)  in  that  case,  to  whom  would  it  be  unintel- 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEUID^.  157 

ligible  ?  Why,  to  the  Athenians,  for  example,  or  to 
some  people  of  continental  Greece.  But  on  that  sup- 
position, it  would  have  been  exchanged  for  some  form 
of  Attic  or  other  continental  Greek  —  to  be  Ionian  by 
descent,  did  not  imply  the  use  of  a  dialect  formed 
in  Asia  Minor.  And  not  only  would  heterogeneous 
forms  of  language  have  thus  crept  into  the  Iliad,  but 
inevitably  in  making  these  changes,  other  heterogenei- 
ties in  the  substance  would  have  crept  in  concurrently. 
That  purity  and  sincerity  of  Ionic  life,  which  arrested 
the  eye  of  Plato,  would  have  melted  away  under  such 
modern  adulterations. 

IV.  —  But  another  argument,  against  the  possibility 
of  such  recasts,  is  founded  upon  a  known  remarkable 
fact.  It  is  a  fact  of  history,  coming  down  to  us  from 
several  quarters,  that  the  people  of  Athens  were 
exceedingly  discontented  with  the  slight  notice  taken 
of  themselves  in  the  Iliad.  Now  observe,  already 
this  slight  notice  is  in  itself  one  argument  of  Homer's 
antiquity  ;  and  the  Athenians  did  wrong  to  murmur 
at  so  many  petty  towns  of  the  Peloponnesus  being 
glorified,  while  in  their  case  Homer  only  gives  one 
line  or  so  to  Menestheus  their  chief.  Let  them  be 
thankful  for  getting  anything.  Homer  knew  what 
Athens  was  in  those  days  much  better  than  any  of 
us  ;  and  surely  Glasgow  or  Liverpool  could  not  com- 
plain of  being  left  out  of  the  play,  in  a  poem  on  the 
Crusades.  But  there  was  another  case  that  annoyed 
the  Athenians  equally.  Theseus,  it  is  well  known, 
was  a  great  scamp  ;  in  fact,  a  very  bad  fellow  indeed. 
You  need  go  no  further  than  Ariadne,  (who,  by  most 
tradition,  hanged  herself  in  her  garters,  at  Naxos,)  to 


158  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMERIDJJ. 

prove  that.  Now,  Homer,  who  was  determined  to 
tell  no  lies  in  the  matter,  roundly  blurts  out  the  motive 
for  his  base  desertion  of  Ariadne,  which  had  the 
double  guUt  of  crueltj'  and  of  ingratitude,  as  in 
Jason's  conduct  towards  Medea  It  was,  says  the 
honest  bard,  because  he  was  desperately  in  love  mth 
^gle.  Tliis  line  in  Homer,  was  like  a  coroner's 
verdict  on  Ariadne  —  died  hy  the  villany  of  Theseus. 
It  was  impossible  to  hide  this  conduct  in  their  national 
hero,  if  it  were  suffered  to  stand.  An  attempt  was, 
therefore,  made  to  eject  it.  Pisistratus  is  cliarged,  iii 
this  one  instance,  with  having  smuggled  in  a  single 
forged  line.  But,  even  in  his  own  lifetime,  it  was 
dismally  suspected ;  and,  when  Pisistratus  saw  men 
looking  askance  at  it,  he  would  say  — '  Well,  Sir, 
what's  in  the  wind  now  ?  What  are  you  squinting 
at  ?  '  Upon  which  the  man  would  answer  —  '  Oh, 
nothing.  Sir,  I  was  only  looking  at  things  in  general.' 
But  Pisistratus  knew  better  —  it  was  no  go  —  that  he 
saw  —  and  the  line  is  obelized  to  this  day.  Now, 
where  Athens  failed,  is  it  conceivable  that  anybody 
else  would  succeed? 

V.  —  A  fifth  argument,  upon  which  we  rely  much, 
is  the  Circumstantiality  of  the  Iliad.  Let  the 
reader  pause  to  consider  what  that  means  in  this 
particular  case.  The  invention  of  little  personal  cir- 
cumstances and  details,  is  now  a  well-known  artifice 
of  novelists.  We  see  even  in  our  oldest  metrical 
romances,  a  tendency  to  this  mode  of  giving  a  lively 
expression  to  the  characters,  as  well  as  of  giving  a 
colorable  reality  to  the  tale.  Yet,  even  with  uu,  it  is 
an  art   that    has    never   but    once   been   succet.s'x"   r 


HOMER    A.KD    THE    HOMEHID^.  l59 

ipplied  to  regular  Mstory.  De  Foe  is  the  only  ailhor 
known,  who  has  so  plausibly  circumstantiated  his  false 
historical  records,  as  to  make  them  pass  for  genuine, 
even  with  literary  men  and  critics.  In  his  Memoirs  of 
a  Cavalier,  he  assumes  the  character  of  a  soldier  who 
had  fought  under  Gustavus  Adolphus,  (1628-31,)  and 
afterwards  (1642  —  45)  in  our  own  parliamentary  war  ; 
in  fact,  he  corresponds  chronologically  to  Captain 
Dalgetty.  In  other  works  he  personates  a  sea  cap- 
tain, a  hosier,  a  runaway  apprentice,  an  officer  under 
Lord  Peterborough  in  his  Catalonian  expedition.  In 
this  last  character,  he  imposed  upon  Dr.  Johnson,  and 
by  men  better  read  in  history  he  has  actually  been 
quoted  as  a  regular  historical  authority.  How  did  he 
accomplish  so  difficult  an  end?  Simply  by  inventing 
such  little  cii'cumstantiations  of  any  character  or  inci- 
dent, as  seem  by  their  apparent  inertness  of  effect, 
to  verify  themselves  ;  for,  where  the  reader  is  told 
that  such  a  person  was  the  posthumous  son  of  a 
tanner  ;  that  his  mother  married  afterwards  a  Presby- 
terian schoolmaster,  who  gave  him  a  smattering  of 
Latin ;  but,  the  schoolmaster  dying  of  the  plague, 
that  he  was  compelled  at  sixteen  to  enlist  for  bread  ; 
in  all  this,  as  there  is  nothing  at  all  amusing,  we 
conclude,  that  the  author  could  have  no  reason  to 
detain  us  with  such  particulars,  but  simply  because 
they  were  true.  To  invent,  when  nothing  at  all  ia 
gained  by  inventing,  there  seems  no  imaginable  temp- 
tation. It  never  occurs  to  us,  that  this  very  construc- 
tion of  the  case,  this  very  inference  from  such  neutral 
details,  was  precisely  the  object  which  De  Foe  had  in 
view,  and  by  which  he  meant  to  profit.  He  thus 
gains  the  opportiinity  of  impressing  upon  his  tales  a 


160  HOMEB   AND   THE   HOMEEIDJE. 

double  character  ;  he  makes  them  so  amusing,  that 
gii'ls  read  them  for  novels  ;  and  he  gives  them  such 
an  air  of  verisimilitude,  that  men  read  them  for  his- 
tories. 

Now  this  is  one  amongst  the  many  acts  by  which,  m 
comparison  of  the  ancients,  we  have  so  prodigiously 
extended  the  compass  of  literature.  In  Grecian,  oi 
even  in  Roman  literature,  no  dream  ever  arose  of 
interweaving  a  fictitious  interest  .with  a  true  one.  Noi 
was  the  possibility  then  recognized  of  any  interest 
founded  in  fiction,  even  though  kept  apart  from  his- 
toric records.  Look  at  Statins  ;  look  at  Virgil  ;  look 
at  Valerius  Flaccus ;  or  look  at  the  entire  Greek 
drama ;  not  one  incident  beyond  the  mere  descriptive 
circumstances  of  a  battle,  or  a  storm,  or.  a  funeral 
solemnity,  with  the  ordinary  turns  of  skill  or  chance 
in  the  games  which  succeed,  can  be  looked  upon  as 
matter  of  invention.  All  rested  upon  actual  tradition  : 
—  in  the  Mneid,  for  instance,  upon  ancient  Italian 
traditions  still  lingering  amongst  the  people  ;  in  the 
Thebaid,  where  the  antiquity  of  the  story  is  too  great 
to  allow  of  this  explanation,  doubtless  they  were  found 
in  Grecian  poems.  Four  centuries  after  the  Christian 
era,  if  the  Satyricon  of  Petrouius  Arbiter  is  excepted, 
and  a  few  sketches  of  Lucian,  we  find  the  first  feeble 
tentative  development  of  the  romance  interest.  The 
CyropcEdia  was  simply  one-sided  in  its  information. 
But,  in  the  Iliad,  we  meet  with  many  of  these  little 
individual  circumstances,  which  can  be  explained  (con- 
sistently with  the  remark  here  made)  upon  no  princi- 
ple whatever  except  that  of  downright,  notorious  truth. 
Hom.er  could  not  have  wandered  so  far  astray  from  the 
universal  sympathies  of  his  country,  as  ever  to  think 


HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEEID^.  161 

of  fictions  so  useless ;  and  if  he  had,  he  would  soon 
nave  been  recalled  to  the  truth  by  disagreeable  expe- 
riences ;  for  the  construction  would  have  been  —  that 
he  was  a  person  very  ill-informed,  and  not  trustworthy 
through  ignorance. 

Thus,  in  speaking  of  Polydamas,  Homer  says  {Iliad 
XTiii.  250)  that  he  and  Hector  were  old  cronies  ;  which 
might  strike  the  reader  as  odd,  since  Polydamas  was 
no  fighting  man  at  all,  but  cultivated  the  arts  of  peace. 
Partly,  therefore,  by  way  of  explaining  their  connec- 
tion —  partly  for  the  simple  reason  that  doubtless,  it 
was  a  fact.  Homer  adds  that  they  were  born  in  the 
same  night ;  a  circumstance  which  is  known  to  have 
had  considerable  weight  upon  early  friendships  in  the 
houses  of  Oriental  princes. 

'ExroQt  d'  j;tv  iTuiQog,  it;  d'  ev  rvxri  ycrovTO. 
'  To  Hector  he  was  a  bosom  friend, 
For  in  one  night  they  were  born.' 

Now,  we  argue,  that  had  Homer  not  lived  within  a 
reasonable  number  of  generations  after  Troy,  he  never 
would  have  learned  a  little  fact  of  this  kind.  He  must 
have  heard  it  from  his  nurse,  good  old  creature,  who 
had  heard  her  grandfather  talk  with  emotion  of  Troy 
and  its  glorious  palaces,  and  of  the  noble  line  of 
princes  that  perished  in  her  final  catastrophe.  A  ray 
of  that  great  sunset  had  still  lingered  in  the  old  man's 
youth  ;  and  the  deep  impression  of  so  memorable  a 
tragedj  had  carried  into  popular  remembrance  vast 
numbers  of  specialities  and  circumstantialities,  such  as 
might  be  picked  out  of  the  Iliad,  that  could  have  no 
attraction  for  the  mind,  out  simply  under  the  one  con- 
dition that  they  were  true.  An  interval  as  great  as 
11 


162  HOMER    AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

four  centuries,  Avhen  all  relation  between  the  hcuse  oi 
Priam  and  the  surrounding  population  would  have  been 
obliterated,  must  have  caused  such  petty  anecdotes  to 
lose  their  entire  interest,  and,  in  that  case,  they  would 
never  have  reached  Homer.  Here,  therefore,  is  a 
collateral  indication  that  Homer  lived  probably  within 
two  centuries  of  Troy.  On  the  other  hand,  if  the  Iliad 
had  ever  become  so  obsolete  in  its  diction  that  popular 
feeling  called  for  a  diaskeue,  or  thorough  recast,  in 
that  case,  we  argue  that  all  such  trivial  circumstances 
(interesting  only  to  those  who  knew  them  for  facts) 
would  have  dropped  out  of  the  composition. 

VI.  —  That  argument  is  of  a  nature  to  yield  us  an 
extensive  field,  if  we  had  space  to  pursue  it.  The 
following,  which  we  offer  as  our  argument,  is  negative  : 
it  lies  in  the  absence  of  all  anachronisms,  which  would 
most  certainly  have  arisen  in  any  modern  remodelling, 
and  which  do  in  fact  disfigure  all  the  Greek  forgeries 
of  letters,  &c.  in  Alexandrian  ages.  How  inevitable, 
amongst  a  people  so  thoroughly  uncritical  as  the 
Greeks,  would  have  been  the  introduction  of  anachro- 
nisms by  wholesale,  had  a  more  modern  hand  been 
allowed  to  tamper  Avith  the  texture  of  the  poem  !  But, 
on  the  contrary,  all  inventions,  rights,  usages,  known 
to  have  been  of  later  origin  than  the  Homeric  ages, 
are  absent  from  the  Iliad.  For  instance,  in  any  recast 
subsequent  to  the  era  of  700  B.  C,  how  natural  it 
would  have  been  to  introduce  the  trumpet !  And 
javalry  again,  how  excellent  a  resource  for  varying 
and  inspiriting  the  battles  :  whereas  Homer  introduces 
horses  only  as  attached  to  the  chariots ;  and  the 
chariots  as  used  only  by  a  few  leading  heroes,  whose 


HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEBID-j;.  163 

heavy  mail  made  it  impossible  for  them  to  go  on  foot, 
as  the  mass  of  the  army  did.  Why,  then,  did  Homer 
himself  forbear  to  introduce  cavalry  ?  Was  he  blind  to 
the  variety  he  would  have  gained  for  his  descriptive 
scenes  ?  No ;  but  simply  upon  the  principle,  so 
absolute  for  him  of  adhering  to  the  facts.  But  what 
caused  the  fact  ?  Why  was  there  no  cavalry  ?  Evi- 
dently from  the  enormous  difficulty  of  carrying  any 
number  of  horses  by  sea,  under  the  universal  non- 
adaptation  to  such  a  purpose  of  the  Greek  shipping. 
The  '  horse-marines  '  had  not  begun  to  show  out ;  and 
a  proper  '  troop-ship '  must  have  been  as  little  known 
to  Agamemnon,  as  the  right  kind  of  Havana  cigars  or 
as  duelling  pistols  to  Menelaus. 

VII.  — A  seventh  argument  for  the  integrity  of  our 
present  Iliad  in  its  main  section,  lies  in  the  nexus  of 
its  subordinate  parts.  Every  canto  in  this  main  sec- 
tion implies  every  other.  Thus  the  funeral  of  Hector 
implies  that  his  body  had  been  ransomed.  That  fact 
implies  the  Avhole  journey  of  Priam  to  the  tents  of 
Achilles.  This  implies  the  death  and  last  combat  of 
Hector.  But  how  should  Hector  and  Achilles  have 
met  in  battle,  after  the  wrathful  vow  of  Achilles  ? 
That  argues  the  death  of  Patroclus  as  furnishing  the 
suificieiit  motive.  But  the  death  of  Patroclus  argues 
the  death  of  Sarpedon,  the  Trojan  ally,  which  it  was 
that  roused  the  vindictive  fury  of  Hector.  These 
events  in  their  turn  argue  the  previous  success  of  the 
Trojans,  which  had  moved  Patroclus  to  interfere.  And 
this  success  of  the  Trojans  argues  the  absence  of 
Achilles,  which  again  argues  the  feud  with  Agamem- 
"^on.     The  whole  of  this  story  unfolds  like  a  process  of 


164  HOMEB    AND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

vegetation.  And  the  close  intertexture  of  the  several 
parts  is  as  strong  a  proof  of  unity  in  the  design  and 
execution,  as  the  intense  life  and  consistency  in  the 
conception  of  Achilles. 

VIII.  —  By  an  eighth  argument,  we  reply  to  the  ob- 
jection sometimes  made  to  the  transmission  of  the 
Iliad,  through  the  rhapsodoi,  from  the  burden  which 
so  long  a  poem  would  have  imposed  upon  the  memory. 
Some  years  ago  was  published,  in  this  journal,*  a  paper 
on  the  Flight  of  the  Kalmuck  Tartars  from  Russia. 
Bergmann,  the  German  from  whom  that  account  was 
chiefly  drawn,  resided  for  a  long  time  amongst  the 
Kalmucks,  and  had  frequent  opportunities  of  bearing 
musical  recitations  from  the  DschaiigcEriade.  This  is 
the  great  Tartar  epic ;  and  it  extends  to  three  hundred 
and  sixty  cantos,  each  averaging  the  length  of  an 
Homeric  book.  Now,  it  was  an  ordinary  effort  for  a 
minstrel  to  master  a  score  of  these  cantos,  which 
amounts  pretty  nearly  to  the  length  of  the  Iliad.  But 
a  case  more  entirely  in  point  is  found  in  a  minor  work 
of  Xenophon's.  A  young  man  is  there  introduced  as 
boasting  that  he  could  repeat  by  heart  the  whole  of  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  —  a  feat,  by  the  way,  which  has 
been  more  than  once  accomplished  by  English  school- 
boys."'^ But  the  answer  made  to  this  young  man  is,  that 
there  is  nothing  at  all  extraordinary  in  that ;  for  thai 
every  common  rhapsodos  could  do  as  much.  To  us, 
indeed,  the  whole  objection  seems  idle.  The  human 
memory  is  capable  of  far  greater  efforts  ;  and  the  music 
would  prodigiously  lighten  the  effort.      But,  as  it  is  on 

*  Blackwood's  Magazine 


HOMES    AND    THE    HOMERID^.  165 

objection  often  started,  we  may  consider  it  fortunate 
that  we  have  such  a  passage  as  this  in  Xenophon, 
which  not  only  illustrates  the  kind  of  qualification 
looked  for  in  a  rhapsodos,  but  shows  also  that  such  a 
class  of  people  continue  to  practise  in  the  generation 
subsequent  to  that  of  Pericles. 

Upon  these  eight  arguments  we  buUd.  This  is  our 
case.  They  are  amply  sufficient  for  the  purpose. 
Homei  is  not  a  person  known  to  us  separately  and  pre- 
viously, concerning  whom  we  are  inquiring  whether, 
in  addition  to  what  else  we  know  of  him,  he  did  not 
also  write  the  Iliad.  '  Homer '  means  nothing  else 
but  the  man  who  wrote  the  Iliad.  Somebody,  you 
will  say,  mus^  have  written  it.  True  ;  but,  if  that 
somebody  should  appear  by  any  probable  argument, 
to  have  been  a  multitude  of  persons,  there  goes  to 
wreck  the  tmity  which  is  essential  to  the  idea  of  a 
Homer.  Now,  this  unity  is  sufficiently  secured,  if  it 
should  appear  that  a  considerable  section  of  the  Iliad 
—  and  that  section  by  far  the  most  full  of  motion,  of 
human  interest,  of  tragical  catastrophe,  and  through 
which  runs  as  the  connecting  principle,  a  character 
the  most  brilliant,  magnanimous,  and  noble,  that  Pagan 
morality  could  conceive  —  was,  and  must  have  been, 
the  work  and  conception  of  a  single  mind.  Achilles 
revolves  through  that  section  of  the  Iliad  in  a  series  of 
phases,  each  of  which  looks  forward  and  backward  to 
all  the  rest.  He  travels  like  the  sun  through  his  diurnal 
course.  We  see  him  first  of  all  rising  upon  us  as  a 
princely  councillor  for  the  welfare  of  the  Grecian  host. 
We  see  him  atrociously  insulted  in  this  office  :  yet 
stUl,  though  a  king  and  unused  to  opposition,  and  boil- 


166  HOMEE    A.ND    THE    HOMEEID^. 

rag  with  youthful  blood,  nevertheless  commanding  his 
passion,  and  retiring  in  clouded  majesty.  Even  thus, 
though  having  now  so  excellent  a  plea  for  leaving  the 
army,  and  though  aware  of  the  early  death  that  awaited 
him  if  he  stayed,  he  disdains  to  profit  by  the  evasion. 
We  see  him  still  living  in  the  tented  field,  and  generous- 
ly unable  to  desert  those  who  had  so  insultingly  deserted 
him.  We  see  him  in  a  dignified  retirement,  fulfilling 
all  the  duties  of  religion,  friendship,  hospitality ;  and, 
like  an  accomplished  man  of  taste,  cultivating  the  arts 
of  peace.  We  see  him  so  far  surrendering  his  wrath 
to  the  earnest  persuasion  of  friendship,  that  he  comes 
forth  at  a  critical  moment  for  the  Greeks  to  save  them 
from  ruin.  What  are  his  arms  ?  He  has  none  at  all. 
Simply  by  his  voice  he  changes  the  face  of  the  battle. 
He  shouts,  and  nations  fly  from  the  sound.  Never  but 
once  again  is  such  a  shout  recorded  by  a  poet  — 

•  He  called  so  loud,  that  all  the  hollow  deep 
Of  hell  resounded. 

Who  called  ?  That  shout  was  the  shout  of  an  archangel. 
Next  we  see  him  reluctantly  allowing  his  dearest  friend 
to  assume  his  own  arms  ;  the  kindness  and  the  modesty 
of  his  nature  forbidding  him  to  suggest,  that  not  the 
divine  weapons  but  the  immortal  arm  of  the  wielder 
\;iad  made  them  invincible.  His  friend  perishes.  Then 
we  see  him  rise  in  his  noontide  wrath,  before  which  no 
life  could  stand.  The  frenzy  of  his  grief  makes  him 
for  a  time  cruel  and  implacable.  He  sweeps  the  field  of 
battle  like  a  monsoon.  His  revenge  descends  perfect, 
Budden,  like  a  curse  from  heaven.  We  now  recognize 
the  goddess-born.  This  is  his  avatar.  Had  he  moved 
♦-o  battle  under  the  ordinary  motives  of  Ajax,  Diomed, 


HOMER   AND   THE    H0MEEID2E.  167 

tnd  the  other  heroes,  we  never  could  have  sympathized 
or  gone  along  with  so  withering  a  course.  We  should 
have  viewed  him  as  a  '  scourge  of  God,'  or  fiend,  born 
for  the  tears  of  women  and  the  maledictions  of  mothers. 
But  the  poet,  before  he  would  let  him  loose  upon  men, 
creates  for  him  a  sufficient,  or  at  least  palliating  motive. 
In  the  sternest  of  his  acts,  we  read  only  the  anguish  of 
his  grief.  This  is,  surely  the  perfection  of  art.  At 
length  the  work  of  destruction  is  finished ;  but,  if  the 
poet  leaves  him  at  this  point,  there  would  be  a  want  ot 
repose,  and  we  should  be  left  with  a  painful  impression 
of  his  hero  as  forgetting  the  earlier  humanities  of  his 
nature,  and  brought  forward  only  for  final  exhibition 
in  his  terrific  phases.  Now,  therefore,  by  machinery 
the  most  natural,  we  see  this  great  hero  travelling  back 
within  our  gentler  sympathies,  and  revolving  to  his  rest 
like  the  sun  disrobed  of  his  blazing  terrors.  We  see 
him  settling  down  to  that  humane  and  princely  charac- 
ter in  which  he  had  been  first  exhibited  —  we  see  him 
relenting  at  the  sight  of  Priam's  gray  hairs,  touched 
with  the  sense  of  human  calamity,  and  once  again 
mastering  his  passion  —  grief  now,  as  formerly  he  had 
mastered  his  wrath.  He  consents  that  his  feud  shall 
sleep  :  he  surrenders  the  corpse  of  his  capital  enemy ; 
and  the  last  solemn  chords  of  the  poem  rise  with  a 
solemn  intonation  from  the  grave  of  '  Hector,  the  tamer 
of  horses '  —  that  noble  soldier  who  had  so  long  been 
the  column  of  his  country,  and  to  whom,  in  his  dying 
moments,  the  stern  Achilles  had  declared — but  then 
in  the  middle  career  of  his  grief — that  no  honorable 
burial  should  ever  be  granted. 

Such  is  the  outline  of  an  Achilleis,  as  it  might  be 
gathered  from  the    Iliad :  and  for  the  use  of  schools 


168  HOMER    ANP    THE    HOMERID^. 

we  are  surprised  tliat  such  a  beautiful  whole  has  not 
long  since  been  extracted.  A  tale,  more  affecting  by 
its  story  and  vicissitudes  does  not  exist ;  and,  after 
this,  who  cares  in  what  order  the  non-essential  parts 
of  the  poem  may  be  arranged,  or  whether  Homer  was 
their  author  ?  It  is  sufficient  that  one  mind  must  have 
executed  this  Achilleis,  in  consequence  of  its  intense 
unity.  Every  part  implies  every  other  part.  With 
such  a  model  before  him  as  this  poem  on  the  wrath  of 
Achilles,  Aristotle  could  not  carry  his  notions  of  unity 
too  high.  And  the  unifying  mind  which  could  conceive 
and  execute  th?s  Achilleis  —  that  is  what  we  mean  by 
Homer.  As  well  might  it  be  said,  that  the  parabola 
described  by  a  cannon-ball  was  in  one-half  due  to  a 
first  discharge,  and  in  the  other  half  to  a  second,  as 
that  one  poet  could  lay  the  preparations  for  the  passion 
and  sweep  of  such  a  poem,  whUst  another  conducted 
it  to  a  close.  Creation  does  not  proceed  by  instal- 
ments :  the  steps  of  its  revolution  are  not  successive, 
but  simultaneous  ;  and  the  last  book  of  the  Achilleis 
was  undoubtedly  conceived  in  the  same  moment  as  the 
tvrst. 

"What  efiect  such  an  Achilleis,  abstracted  from  the 
iliad,  would  probably  leave  upon  the  mind,  it  happens 
that  we  can  measure  by  our  own  childish  experience. 
In  Rusdell's  Ancient  Europe,  a  book  much  used  in  the 
ast  century,  there  is  an  abstract  of  the  Iliad,  which 
presents  very  nearly  the  outline  of  an  Achilleis,  such 
as  we  have  supposed.  The  heroes  are  made  to  speak 
in  a  sort  of  stilted,  or  at  least  buskined  language,  not 
unsuited  to  youthful  taste  :  and  from  the  close  con- 
rergement  of  the  separate  parts,  the  interest  is  con- 
densed.    This  book,  in  our  eighth  year,  we  read.     I* 


HOMER   AN-D    THE    HOMEBID-E.  169 

Iras  our  first  introduction  to  the  '  Tale  of  Troy  divine  ; ' 
and  we  do  not  deceive  ourselves  in  saying,  that  tiiis 
memorable  experience  drew  from  us  the  first  unselfish 
tears  that  ever  we  shed  ;  and  by  the  stings  of  grief  which 
tt  left  behind,  demonstrated  its  own  natural  pathos. 

"Whether  the  same  mind  conceived  also  the  Odyssey^ 
is  a  separate  question.  We  are  certainly  inclined  to 
believe,  that  the  Odyssey  belongs  to  a  post-Homeric 
generation  —  to  the  generation  of  the  Nostoi,  or  home- 
ward voyages  of  the  several  Grecian  chiefs.  And 
with  respect  to  all  the  burlesque  or  satiric  poems 
ascribed  to  Homer,  such  as  the  Batrachomyomachia, 
the  Margites,  &c.,  the  whole  fiction  seems  to  have 
arisen  out  of  an  uncritical  blunder  ;  they  had  been 
classed  as  Homeric  poems  —  meaning  by  the  word 
'  Homeric,'  simply  that  they  had  a  relation  or  reference 
to  Homer,  which  they  certainly  have.  At  least  we 
may  say  this  of  the  Batrachoinyoniachia,  which  still 
survives,  that  it  undoubtedly  points  to  the  Iliad  as  a 
mock-heroic  parody  upon  its  majestic  forms  and  diction. 
In  that  sense  it  is  Homeric  —  i.  e.  it  relates  to  Homer's 
poetry  ;  it  presupposes  it  as  the  basis  of  its  own  fun. 
But  subsequent  generations,  careless  and  uncritical, 
understood  the  word  Homeric  to  mean  —  actually  com- 
posed by  Homer.  How  impossible  this  was,  the  reader 
may  easily  imagine  to  himself  by  the  parallel  case  of 
OUT  own  parodies  on  Scripture.  What  opening  for  a 
parody  could  have  arisen  in  the  same  age  as  that 
Scriptural  translation?  '  Howbeit,'  '  peradventure,' 
•  lifted  up  his  voice  and  wept,'  '  found  favor  in  thy 
right,'  —  phrases  such  as  these  have,  to  our  modern 
feelings,  a  deep  coloring  of  antiquity  ;  placed,  there- 
'bre,  in  juxtaposition  with  modern  words   or  modern 


170  HOMER   AND    THE    HOMEKID^. 

ideas,  they  produce  a  sense  of  contrast  whick  la 
strongly  connected  with  the  ludicrous.  But  nothing 
of  this  result  could  possibly  exist  for  those  who  first 
used,  these  phrases  in  translation.  The  words  were 
such  as,  in  their  own  age,  ranked  as  classical  and 
proper.  These  were  no  more  liable  to  associations 
of  the  ludicrous,  than  the  serious  style  of  our  own  age 
is  at  this  moment.  And  on  the  same  principle,  in 
order  to  suppose  the  language  of  the  Iliad,  as,  for 
example,  the  solemn  formulce.  which  introduce  all  the 
replies  and  rejoinders,  open  to  the  ludicrous,  they  must, 
first  of  all,  have  had  time  to  assume  the  sombre  hues 
of  antiquity.  But  even  that  is  not  enough  :  the  Iliad 
must  previously  have  become  so  popular,  that  a  man 
might  count  with  certainty  upon  his  own  ludicrous 
travesties,  as  applying  themselves  at  once  to  a  serious 
model,  radicated  in  the  universal  feeling.  Otherwise, 
to  express  the  case  mechanically,  there  is  no  resistance, 
and  consequently  no  possibility  of  a  rebound.  Hence 
it  is  certain  that  the  burlesques  of  the  Iliad  could  not 
be  Homeric,  in  the  sense  which  an  unlearned  public 
imagined  ;  and  as  to  the  satiric  poem  of  the  Margites, 
it  is  contrary  to  all  the  tendencies  of  human  nature, 
that  a  public  sensibility  to  satire  should  exist,  until 
the  simple  age  of  Homer  had  been  supplanted  by  an 
age  of  large  cities,  and  a  complex  state  of  social  refine- 
ment. Thus  far  we  abjure,  as  monstrous  moral  an- 
achronisms, the  parodies  and  lampoons  attributed  to 
Homer.  Secondly,  upon  the  Odyssey,  as  liable  to 
heavy  suspicion,  we  suspend  our  judgment,  with  a 
weight  of  jealousy  against  it.  But  finally,  as  regards 
the  Iliad,  we  hold  that  its  noblest  section  has  a  perfect 
"ind  separate  unity  ;  that  it  was  therefore  written  by 


HOMEE  AXD  THE  HOM.EE  D^.         171 

one  man  ;  that  it  was  also  written  a  thousand  years 
before  our  Christian  era ;  and  that  it  has  not  been 
essentially  altered.  These  are  the  elements  which 
make  up  our  compound  meaning,  when  we  assert  the 
existence  of  Homer,  in  any  sense  interesting  to  modern 
ages.  And  for  the  affirmation  of  that  question  in  that 
interesting  sense,  we  believe  ourselves  to  have  offered 
more  and  weightier  arguments  than  all  which  the 
German  army  of  infidels  have  been  able  to  muster 
against  it. 


STYLE. 


Amongst  the  never-ending  arguments  for  thankful- 
ness in  the  privilege  of  a  British  birth  —  arguments 
more  solemn  even  than  numerous,  and  telling  more 
when  weighed  than  when  counted,  pondere  qudm  nu- 
mero  —  three  aspects  there  are  of  our  national  charac- 
ter which  trouble  the  uniformity  of  our  feelings.  A 
good  son,  even  in  such  a  case,  is  not  at  liberty  to 
describe  himself  as  '  ashamed.'  Some  gentler  word 
must  be  found  to  express  the  character  of  his  distress. 
And,  whatever  grounds  of  blame  may  appear  against 
his  venerated  mother,  it  is  one  of  his  filial  duties  to 
suppose  —  either  that  the  blame  applies  but  partially, 
or,  if  it  should  seem  painfully  universal,  that  it  is  one 
of  those  excesses  to  which  energetic  natures  are  liable, 
through  the  very  strength  of  their  constitutional  char- 
acteristics. Such  things  do  happen.  It  is  certain,  for 
instance,  that  to  the  deep  sincerity  of  British  nature, 
and  to  that  shyness  or  principle  of  reserve  which  is 
inseparable  from  self-resj)ect,  must  be  traced  philo- 
sophically the  churlishness  and  unsocial  bearing,  for 
which,  at  one  time,  we  were  so  angrily  arraigned  bv 
the  smooth  south  of  Europe.  That  facile  obsequious- 
Dess,    which   attracts    the    inconsiderate   in  Belgians 


STYLE.  173 

Frencliinen,  and  Italians,  is  too  generally  a  mixed 
product  from  impudence  and  insincerity.  Want  of 
principle  and  want  of  moral  sensibility  compose  the 
original  fundiis  of  southern  manners  :  and  the  natural 
product,  in  a  specious  hollowness  of  demeanor,  has 
been  afterwards  propagated  by  iirdtation  through  innu- 
merable people,  who  may  have  partaken  less  deeply, 
or  not  at  all,  in  the  original  moral  qualities  that  have 
moulded  such  a  manner. 

Great  faults,  therefore,  may  grow  out  of  great  \irtue8 
in  excess.  And  this  consideration  should  make  us 
cautious  even  towards  an  enemy ;  much  more  when 
approaching  so  holy  a  question  as  the  merits  of  our 
maternal  land.  Else,  and  supposing  that  a  strange 
nation  had  been  concerned  in  our  judgment,  we  should 
declare  ourselves  mortified  and  humiliated  by  three 
expressions  of  the  British  character,  too  public  to  have 
escaped  the  notice  of  Europe.  First,  we  writhe  with 
shame  when  we  hear  of  semi-delirious  lords  and  la- 
dies, sometimes  theatrically  costumed  in  caftans  and 
turbans,  proclaiming  to  the  whole  world  —  as  the  law 
■)f  their  households  —  that  all  nations  and  languages 
*re  free  to  enter  their  gates,  with  one  sole  exception 
directed  against  their  British  compatriots  ;  that  is  to 
say,  abjuring  by  sound  of  trumpet  that  land  through 
which  only  they  themselves  have  risen  into  considera- 
tion ;  spurning  those  for  countrymen  —  '  without 
whom,'  (as  M.  Gourville  had  the  boldness  to  tell 
Charles  II.)  '  without  whom,  by  G —  Sir,  you  yourself 
are  nothing.'  We  all  know  who  they  are  that  have  done 
this  thing  :  we  may  know,  if  we  inquire,  how  many  con- 
'.jeited  coxcombs  are  at  this  moment  acting  upon  that 
precedent;    in  which  we  scruple  not  to  avow,  is  con- 


174  STYLE. 

tiiined  a  fund  of  satire,  more  crying  than  any  wnich 
Juvenal  found  in  the  worst  days  of  Rome.  And  we 
may  ask  calmly  —  Would  not  death,  judicial  death, 
have  visited  such  an  act  amongst  the  ancient  repub- 
lics ?  Next,  but  with  that  indulgence  which  belongs 
to  an  infirmity  rather  than  an  error  of  the  will,  we  feel 
ashamed  for  the  obstinate  obtuseness  of  our  country, 
in  regard  to  one  and  the  most  effective  of  the  Fine 
Alts.  It  will  be  understood  that  we  speak  of  music. 
In  painting  and  in  sculpture  it  is  now  past  disputing 
that  if  we  are  destined  to  inferiority  at  all,  it  is  an  infe- 
riority only  to  the  Italians  and  the  ancient  Greeks ;  an 
inferiority  which,  if  it  were  even  sure  to  be  permanent, 
we  share  with  all  the  other  malicious  nations  around 
us.  On  that  head  we  are  safe.  And  in  the  most  ma- 
jestic of  the  Fine  Arts,  in  poetry,  we  have  a  clear  and 
vast  pre-eminence  as  regards  all  nations  ;  no  nation 
but  ourselves  have  equally  succeeded  in  both  forms  of 
the  higher  poetry,  epic  and  tragic.  Whilst  of  medita- 
tive or  philosophic  poetry,  (Young's,  Cowper's,  Words' 
worth's,)  —  to  say  nothing  of  lyric — we  may  affirm 
what  Quinctilian  says  justly  of  Roman  satire  —  '  tola 
quidem  nostra  est.''  If,  therefore,  in  every  mode  of 
composition  through  which  the  impassioned  mind 
speaks,  a  nation  has  excelled  its  rivals,  we  cannot 
be  allowed  to  suppose  any  general  defect  of  sensi- 
bility as  a  cause  of  obtuseness  with  regard  to  music 
So  little,  however,  is  the  grandeur  of  this  divine  art 
suspected  amongst  us  generally,  that  a  man  will  write 
an  essay  deliberately  for  the  purpose  of  putting  on 
record  his  own  preference  of  a  song,  to  the  most 
elaborate  music  of  Mozart :  he  will  glory  in  his  shame, 
ind  though  speaking  in  the  character  of  one  confess- 


STYLE.  175 

lag  to  a  weakness,  will  evidently  view  Mmself  in  the 
light  of  a  candid  man,  laying  bare  a  state  of  feeling 
which  is  natural  and  sound,  opposed  to  a  class  of  false 
pretenders  who,  whilst  servile  to  rules  of  artists,  in 
reality  contradict  their  own  musical  instincts,  and  feel 
little  or  nothing  of  what  they  profess.  Strange  that 
even  the  analogy  of  other  arts  should  not  open  his 
eyes  to  the  delusion  he  is  encouraging  !  A  song,  an 
air,  a  tune  —  that  is,  a  short  succession  of  notes  revolv- 
ing rapidly  upon  itself,  how  could  that,  by  possibility, 
offer  a  field  of  compass  sufficient  for  the  development 
of  great  musical  effects  ?  The  preparation  pregnant 
with  the  future,  the  remote  correspondence,  the  ques- 
tions, as  it  were,  which  to  a  deep  musical  sense,  are 
asked  in  one  passage,  and  answered  in  another  ;  the 
iteration  and  ingemination  of  a  given  effect,  moving 
through  subtle  variations  that  sometimes  disguise  the 
theme,  sometimes  fitfully  reveal  it,  sometimes  throw  it 
out  tumultuously  to  the  daylight,  —  these  and  ten  thou- 
sand forms  of  self-conflicting  musical  passion  —  what 
room  could  they  find,  what  opening,  for  utterance  in 
60  limited  a  field  as  an  air  or  song  ?  A  hunting-box, 
a  park-lodge,  may  have  a  forest  grace  and  the  beauty 
of  appropriateness  ;  but  what  if  a  man  should  match 
such  a  bauble  against  the  Pantheon,  or  against  the 
minsters  of  York  and  Strasburg  ?  A  repartee  may  by 
accident  be  practically  efiective  ;  it  has  been  known  to 
crush  a  party  scheme,  and  an  oration  of  Cicero's,  or 
cf  Burke's,  could  have  done  no  more  ;  but  what  judg- 
ment would  match  the  two  against  each  other  as  de- 
velopments of  power  ?  Let  him  who  finds  the  moon- 
mum  of  nis  musical  gratification  in  a  song,  be  assured, 
by  that  one  fact,  that  his  sensibility  is  rude  and  undo 


176  STYLE. 

veloped.  Yet  exactly  upon  this  level  is  the  ordinary 
state  of  musical  feeling  throughout  Great  Britain  ;  and 
the  howling  wilderness  of  the  psalmody  in  most  parish 
churches  of  the  land,  countersigns  the  statement.  There 
is,  however,  accumulated  in  London  more  musical  sci- 
ence than  in  any  capital  of  the  world.  This,  gradually 
diffused,  will  improve  the  feeling  of  the  country.  And, 
if  it  should  fail  to  do  so,  in  the  worst  case  we  have  the 
satisfaction  of  knowing,  through  Jean  Jacques  Rous- 
seau, and  by  later  evidences,  that,  sink  as  we  may 
below  Italy  and  Germany  in  the  sensibility  to  this 
divine  art,  we  cannot  go  lower  than  France.  Here, 
however,  and  in  this  cherished  obtuseness  as  to  a 
pleasure  so  important  for  human  life,  and  at  the  head 
of  the  physico-intellectual  pleasures,  we  find  a  second 
reason  for  quarrelling  with  the  civilization  of  our  coun- 
try. At  the  summit  of  civilization  in  other  points,  she 
is  here  yet  uncultivated  and  savage. 

A  third  point  is  larger.  Here  (properly  speaking) 
oui  quarrel  is  co-extensive  with  that  general  principle 
in  England,  which  tends  in  all  things  to  set  the  matter 
above  the  manner,  the  substance  above  the  external 
show  ;  a  principle  noble  in  itself,  but  inevitably  Avrong 
wherever  the  manner  blends  inseparably  with  the  sub- 
stance. 

This  general  tendency  operates  in  many  ways  :  but 
our  own  immediate  purpose  is  concerned  with  it  only 
so  far  as  it  operates  upon  style.  In  no  country  upon 
earth,  where  it  is  possible  to  carry  such  a  maxim  into 
practical  effect,  is  it  a  more  determinate  tendency  of 
the  national  mind  to  value  the  matter  of  a  book,  not 
snly  as  paramount  to  the  mmmer^  but  even  as  distinct 
from  it,  and  as  capable  of  a  separate  insulation.    What 


STYLE.  177 

first  gave  a  shock  to  such  a  tendency,  must  have  been 
the  unwilling  and  mysterious  sense  —  that,  in  some 
cases,  the  matter  and  the  manner  were  so  inextricably 
interwoven,  as  not  to  admit  of  this  coarse  bisection.  The 
one  was  embedded,  entangled,  and  interfused  through 
the  other,  in  a  way  which  bade  defiance  to  such  gross 
mechanical  separations.  But  the  tendency  to  view  the 
two  elements  as  in  a  separate  relation  still  predomi- 
nates ;  and,  as  a  consequence,  the  tendency  to  under- 
value the  accomplishment  of  style.  Do  we  mean  that 
the  English,  as  a  literary  nation,  are  practically  less 
sensible  of  the  effects  of  a  beautiful  style  ?  Not  at 
all.  Nobody  can  be  insensible  to  these  effects.  And, 
upon  a  known  fact  of  history,  viz.  the  exclusive  culti- 
vation of  popular  oratory  in  England,  throughout  the 
17th  and  18th  centuries,  we  might  presume  a  peciJiar 
and  exalted  sense  of  style  amongst  ourselves.  Until 
the  French  Revolution,  no  nation  of  Christendom  ex- 
cept England  had  any  practical  experience  of  popular 
rhetoric ;  any  deliberative  eloquence,  for  instance  ; 
any  forensic  eloquence  that  was  made  public ;  any 
democratic  eloquence  of  the  hustings  ;  or  any  form 
whatever  of  public  rhetoric  beyond  that  of  the  pulpit. 
Through  two  centuries  at  least,  no  nation  could  have 
been  so  constantly  reminded  of  the  powers  for  good 
and  evil  which  belong  to  style.  Often  it  must  have 
happened,  to  the  mortification  or  joy  of  multitudes, 
that  one  man  out  of  nindy  nothings  has  contructed 
an  overwhelming  appeal  to  the  passions  of  his  hearers, 
whilst  another  has  thrown  away  the  weightiest  cause 
by  his  manner  of  treating  it.  Neither  let  it  be  said, 
»hat  this  might  not  arise  from  differences  of  style,  but 
fecaiise  the  triumphant  demagogue  made  use  of  fic- 
12 


178  STYLE. 

tions,  and,  therefore,  that  his  triumph  was  still  obtained 
by  means  of  his  matter,  however  hollow  that  matter 
might  have  proved  upon  investigation.  That  case, 
also,  is  a  possible  case  ;  but  often  enough  two  oratora 
have  relied  upon  the  same  identical  matter  —  the  facts, 
for  instance,  of  the  slave-trade  —  and  one  has  turned 
this  to  such  good  account  by  his  arrangements,  by  his 
modes  of  vivifying  dry  statements,  by  his  arts  of  illus- 
tration, by  his  science  of  connecting  things  with  human 
feeling,  that  he  has  left  his  hearers  in  convulsions  of 
passion  ;  whilst  the  other  shall  have  used  every  tittle 
of  the  same  matter  without  eliciting  one  scintillation  of 
sympathy,  without  leaving  behind  one  distinct  impres- 
sion in  the  memory,  or  planting  one  murmur  in  the 
heart. 

In  proportion,  therefore,  as  the  English  people  have 
been  placed  for  two  centuries  and  a  quarter,  (i.  e. 
since  the  latter  decennium  of  James  the  First's  reign,) 
under  a  constant  experience  of  popular  eloquence 
thrown  into  all  channels  of  social  life,  they  must  have 
had  peculiar  occasion  to  feel  the  effects  of  style.  But 
to  feel  is  not  to  feel  consciously.  Many  a  man  is 
charmed  by  one  cause  who  ascribes  the  effect  to  an- 
other. Many  a  man  is  fascinated  by  the  artifices  of 
composition,  who  fancies  that  it  is  the  subject  which 
has  operated  so  potently.  And  even  for  the  subtlest 
of  philosophers  who  keeps  in  mind  the  interpenetration 
of  the  style  and  the  matter,  it  would  be  as  difficult  to 
distribute  the  true  proportion  of  their  joint  action,  as, 
with  regard  to  the  earliest  rays  of  the  dawn,  it  would 
be  to  say  how  much  of  the  beauty  lay  in  the  heavenly 
light  which  chased  away  the  darkness  —  how  much  ?b 
iie  rosy  color  which  that  light  entangled. 


STYLE.  179 

Easily,  therefore,  it  may  have  happened,  that,  under 
the  constant  action  and  practical  effects  of  style,  a 
nation  may  have  failed  to  notice  the  cause  as  the 
cause.  And,  besides  the  distiu'biug  forces  which  mis- 
lead the  judgment  of  the  auditor  in  such  a  case,  there 
are  other  disturbing  forces  which  modify  the  practice 
of  the  speaker.  That  is  good  rhetoric  for  the  hustings 
which  is  bad  for  a  book.  Even  for  the  highest  forms 
of  popular  eloquence,  the  laws  of  style  vary  much 
from  the  general  standard.]  In  the  senate,  and  for  the 
same  reason  in  a  newspaper,  it  is  a  vii-tue  to  reiterate 
your  meaning :  tautology  becomes  a  merit :  variation 
of  the  words,  with  a  substantial  identity  of  the  sense 
and  dilution  of  the  truth,  is  oftentimes  a  necessity.  A 
man  who  should  content  himself  with  a  single  con- 
densed enunciation  of  a  perplexed  doctrine,  would  be 
a  madman  and  a  felo-de-se,  as  respected  his  reliance 
upon  that  doctrine.  Like  boys  who  are  throwing  the 
sun's  rays  into  the  eyes  of  a  mob  by  means  of  a 
mirror,  you  must  shift  yoiur  lights  and  vibrate  your  re- 
flexions at  every  possible  angle,  if  you  would  agitate 
the  popular  mind  extensively.  Every  mode  of  intel- 
lectual communication  has  its  sepai-ate  strength  and 
separate  weakness  ;  its  peculiar  embarrassments,  com- 
pensated by  peculiar  resources.  It  is  the  advantage  of 
a  book,  that  you  can  return  to  the  past  page  if  anything 
in  the  present  depends  upon  it.  But,  return  being  im- 
possible in  the  case  of  a  spoken  harangue,  where  each 
sentence  perishes  as  it  is  born,  both  the  speaker  and 
the  hearer  become  aware  of  a  mutual  interest  in  a 
much  -looser  style,  and  a  perpetual  dispensation  from 
the  severities  of  abstract  discussion.  It  is  for  the  ben- 
efit of  both,  that  the  weightier  propositions  should  be 


180  STYLE. 

detained  before  the  eye  a  good  deal  longer  than  the 
chastity  of  taste  or  the  austerity  of  logic  would  toler- 
ate in  a  book.  JTime  must  be  given  for  the  intellect  to 
eddy  about  a  truth,  and  to  appropriate  its  bearings. 
There  is  a  sort  of  previous  lubrication,  such  as  the 
boa-constrictor  applies  to  any  subject  of  digestion, 
which  is  requisite  to  familiarize  the  mind  with  a  start- 
ling or  a  complex  novelty.  And  this  is  obtained  for 
the  intellect  by  varying  the  modes  of  presenting  it,  — 
now  putting  it  directly  before  the  eye,  now  obliquely, 
now  in  an  abstract  shape,  now  in  the  concrete  ;  all 
which  being  the  proper  technical  discipline  for  dealing 
with  such  cases,  ought  no  longer  to  be  viewed  as  a 
licentious  mode  of  style,  but  as  the  just  style  in  respect 
of  those  licentious  circumstancesJ  And  the  true  art 
for  such  popular  display  is  — To  contrive  the  best 
forms  for  appearing  to  say  something  new,  when  in 
reality  you  are  but  echoing  yourself;  to  break  up 
massy  chords  into  running  variations ;  and  to  mask, 
by  slight  differences  in  the  manner,  a  virtual  identity 
in  the  substance. 

We  have  been  illustrating  a  twofold  neutralizing 
effect  applied  to  the  advantages,  otherwise  enjoyed  by 
the  English  people,  for  appreciating  the  forms  of  style. 
What  was  it  that  made  the  populace  of  Athens  and  of 
Rome  so  sensible  to  the  force  of  rhetoric  and  to  the 
magic  of  language  ?  It  was  the  habit  of  hearing  these 
two  great  engines  daily  worked  for  purposes  interest- 
ing to  themselves  as  citizens,  and  sufficiently  intelligi- 
ble to  command  their  willing  attention.  The  English 
amongst  modern  nations  have  had  the  same  advan- 
tages, allowance  being  made  for  the  much  less  intense 
concentration  of  the  audience.     In  the  ancient  repub- 


STTLE.  181 

lies  it  was  always  the  same  city ;  and,  tl  eiefore,  the 
Bame  audience,  except  in  so  far  as  it  was  spread 
through  many  generations.  This  has  been  otherwise 
in  England  ;  and  yet,  by  newspaper  reports,  any  great 
effect  in  one  assize  town,  or  electoral  town,  has  been 
propagated  to  the  rest  of  the  empire,  through  the 
eighteenth  and  the  present  century.  But  all  this,  and 
the  continual  exemplification  of  style  as  a  great  agency 
for  democratic  effect,  have  not  availed  to  win  a  suffi- 
cient practical  respect,  in  England,  for  the  arts  of 
composition  as  essential  to  authorship.  And  the  reason 
is,  because,  in  the  first  place,  from  the  intertexture  of 
style  and  matter,  from  the  impossibility  that  the  one 
should  affect  them  otherwise  than  in  connection  with 
the  other,  it  has  been  natui-al  for  an  audience  to  charge 
on  the  superior  agent  what  often  belonged  to  the  lower. 
This,  in  the  first  place  ;  and,  secondly,  because  the 
modes  of  style  appropriate  to  popular  eloquence  being 
essentially  different  from  those  of  written  composition, 
any  possible  experience  on  the  hustings,  or  in  the 
senate,  would  pro  tanto  tend  rather  to  disqualify  the 
mind  for  appreciating  the  more  chaste  and  more 
elaborate  qualities  of  style  fitted  for  books ;  and  thus 
a  real  advantage  of  the  English  in  one  direction  has 
been  neutralized  by  two  causes  in  another. 

Generally  and  ultimately,  it  is  certain,  that  our 
British  disregard  or  inadequate  appreciation  of  style, 
though  a  very  lamentable  fault,  has  had  its  origin  in 
the  manliness  of  the  Bridsh  character  ;  in  the  sincerity 
and  directness  of  the  British  taste  ;  in  the  principle  of 
'  esse  quam  videri,'  which  might  be  taken  as  the  key 
to  much  in  our  manner,  much  in  the  philosophy  of 
our  lives  ;  and  finally  in  that  same  love  for  the  practi- 


182  STYLE. 

cal  and  the  tangible  whicli  has  so  memorably  governed 
the  course  of  our  higher  speculations  from  Bacon  to 
Newton.  But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of 
this  most  faulty  habit,  whatever  mixed  causes  no\l 
support  it,  beyond  all  question  it  is,  that  such  a  habit 
of  disregard  or  of  slight  regard  applied  to  all  the  arts 
of  composition  does  exist  in  the  most  painful  extent, 
and  is  detected  by  a  practised  eye  in  every  page  of 
almost  every  book  that  is  published. 

If  you  could  look  anywhere  with  a  right  to  expect 
continual  illustrations  of  what  is  good  in  the  manifold 
qualities  of  style,  it  should  reasonably  be  amongst  our 
professional  authors ;  but,  as  a  body,  they  are  dis- 
tingmshed  by  the  most  absolute  carelessness  in  thia 
respect.  Whether  in  the  choice  of  words  and  idioms, 
or  in  the  construction  of  their  sentences,  it  is  not 
possible  to  conceive  the  principle  of  lazy  indifFerence 
cai-ried  to  a  more  revolting  extremity.  Proof  lies 
before  you,  spread  out  upon  every  page,  that  no 
excess  of  awkwardness,  or  of  inelegance,  or  of  un- 
rythmical  cadence,  is  so  rated  in  the  tariff  of  faults  as 
to  balance,  in  the  writer's  estimate,  the  trouble  of 
remoulding  a  clause,  of  interpolating  a  phrase,  or  even 
of  striking  the  pen  through  a  superfluous  word.  In 
our  own  experience  it  has  happened,  that  we  have 
known  an  author  so  laudably  fastidious  in  this  subtle 
art,  as  to  have  recast  one  chapter  of  a  series  no  less 
than  seventeen  times  ;  so  difficult  was  the  ideal  or 
model  of  excellence  which  he  kept  before  his  mind ; 
Bo  indefatigable  was  his  labor  for  mounting  to  the 
level  of  that  ideal.  Whereas,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
regard  to  a  large  majority  of  the  writers  now  carrying 
forward   the   literature  of  the  country  from  the  last 


STYLE.  183 

generation  to  the  next,  the  evidence  is  perpetual  —  not 
BO  much  that  they  rest  satisfied  with  their  own  random 
preconceptions  of  each  clause  or  sentence,  as  that  they 
never  trouble  themselves  to  form  any  such  precon- 
ceptions. Whatever  words  tumble  out  under  the 
blindest  accidents  of  the  moment,  those  are  the  words 
retained ;  whatever  sweep  is  impressed  by  chance 
upon  the  motion  of  a  period,  that  is  the  arrangement 
ratified.  To  fancy  that  men  thus  determinately  care- 
less as  to  the  grosser  elements  of  style  would  pause 
to  survey  distant  proportions,  or  to  adjust  any  more 
delicate  symmetries  of  good  composition,  would  be 
visionary.  As  to  the  links  of  connection,  the  transi- 
tions, and  the, many  other  functions  of  logic  in  good 
writing,  things  are  come  to  such  a  pass,  that  what  was 
held  true  of  Rome  in  two  separate  ages,  by  two  great 
rhetoricians,  and  of  Constantinople  in  an  age  long 
posterior,  may  now  be  affirmed  of  England  :  the  idiom 
of  our  language,  the  mother  tongue,  survives  only 
amongst  our  women  and  children  ;  not,  Heaven  knows, 
amongst  our  women  who  write  books  —  they  are  often 
painfully  conspicuous  for  all  that  disfigures  authorship  ; 
but  amongst  well-educated  women  not  professionally 
given  to  literature.  Cicero  and  Quinctilian,  each  for 
his  own  generation,  ascribed  something  of  the  same 
pre-eminence  to  the  noble  matrons  of  Rome ;  and 
more  than  one  writer  of  the  lower  empire  has  recorded 
of  Byzantium,  that  in  the  nurseries  of  that  city  was 
found  the  last  home  for  the  purity  of  the  ancient 
Greek.  Xo  doubt  it  might  have  been  found  also 
amongst  the  innumerable  mob  of  that  haughty  metro- 
polis, but  stained  with  corruptions  and  vulgar  abbre- 
viations.    Or  wherever  it  might  lurk,  assuredly  it  was 


184  STYLE. 

not  amongst  the  noble,  the  officials,  or  the  courtiers  ; 
else  it  was  impossible  that  such  a  master  of  affectation 
as  Nicetas  Choniates,  for  instance,  should  have  found 
toleration.  But  the  rationale  of  this  matter  lies  in  a 
small  compass  :  why  are  the  local  names,  whenever 
they  have  resulted  from  the  general  good  sense  of  a 
country,  faithful  to  the  local  truth,  grave,  and  un- 
affected ?  Simply  because  they  are  not  inventions  of 
any  active  faculty,  but  mere  passive  depositions  from 
a  real  impression  upon  the  mind.  On  the  other  hand, 
wherever  there  is  an  ambitious  principle  set  in  motion 
for  name-inventing,  there  it  is  sure  to  terminate  in 
something  monstrous  and  fanciful.  Women  offend  in 
such  cases  even  more  than  men  ;  because  more  of 
sentiment  or  romance  will  mingle  •with  the  names  they 
impose.  Sailors  again  err  in  an  opposite  spirit ;  there 
is  no  affectation  in  their  names,  but  there  is  too  painful 
an  effort  after  ludicrous  allusions  to  the  gravities  of 
their  native  land  —  '  Big  Wig  Island,'  or  '  the  Bishop 
and  his  Clerks :  '  or  the  name  becomes  a  memento  of 
eal  incidents,  but  too  casual  and  personal  to  merit  this 
lasting  record  of  a  name,  such  as  Point  Farewell,  or 
Cajie  Turn-again.  This  fault  applies  to  many  of  the 
Yankee^  names,  and  to  many  more  in  the  southern 
and  western  states  of  North  America,  where  the  earliest 
population  has  usually  been  of  a  less  religious  charac- 
ter :  and,  most  of  all,  it  applies  to  the  names  of  thft 
back  settlements.  These  people  live  under  influences 
the  most  opposite  to  those  of  false  refinement ;  coarse 
necessities,  elementary  features  of  peril  or  embarrass- 
ment, primary  aspects  of  savage  nature,  compose  the 
scenery  of  their  thoughts  ;  and  these  are  reflected  by 
their   names.     Dismal  Swamp    expresses  a  condition 


STYLE.  185 

of  unreclaimed  nature,  which  must  disappear  with 
growing  civilization.  Big  Bone  Lick  tells  a  tale  of 
cruelty  that  cannot  often  he  repeated.  Buffaloes,  like 
all  cattle,  derive  medicinal  benefit  from  salt ;  they 
come  in  droves  for  a  thousand  miles  to  lick  the  masses 
of  rock  salt.  The  new  settlers  observing  this,  lie  in 
ambush  to  surprise  them  :  twenty-five  thousand  noble 
animals,  in  one  instance,  were  massacred  for  their 
hides.  In  the  following  year  the  usual  crowds  ad- 
vanced ;  but  the  first  who  snufied  the  tainted  air 
wheeled  round,  bellowed,  and  '  recoiled  '  far  into  his 
native  woods.  Meantime  the  large  bones  remain  to 
attest  the  extent  of  the  merciless  massacre.  Here,  as 
in  all  cases,  there  is  a  truth  expressed  ;  but  again  too 
casual  and  special.  Besides  that,  from  contempt  of 
elegance,  or  from  defect  of  art,  the  names  resemble 
the  seafaring  nomenclature  in  being  too  rudely  com- 
pounded. 

As  mth  the  imposition  of  names,  so  vnih.  the  use  of 
the  existing  language,  most  classes  stand  between  the 
pressure  of  two  extremes  —  of  coarseness,  of  careless- 
ness, of  imperfect  art,  on  the  one  hand,  of  spurious 
refinement  and  fantastic  ambition  upon  the  other. 
Authors  have  always  been  a  dangerous  class  for  any 
language.  Amongst  the  myriads  who  are  prompted 
to  authorship  by  the  coarse  love  of  reputation,  or  by 
the  nobler  craving  for  sympathy,  there  will  always 
be  thousands  seeking  distinctions  through  novelties 
of  diction.  Hopeless  of  any  audience  through  mere 
weight  of  matter,  they  will  turn  for  their  last  resource 
to  such  tricks  of  innovation  as  they  can  bring  to  bear 
upon  language.  What  care  they  for  purity  or  sim- 
^liicity  of  diction,  if  at  any  cost  of  either  they  can  win 


Igg  STYLE. 

h  special  attention  to  tliemselves  ?  Now,  the  great 
body  of  women  are  under  no  such  unhappy  bias.  If 
they  happen  to  move  in  polished  circles,  or  have 
received  a  tolerable  education,  they  will  speak  their 
native  language  of  necessity  with  truth  and  simplicity. 
And  supposing  them  not  to  be  professional  writers, 
(as  so  small  a  proportion  can  be,  even  in  France  or 
England,)  there  is  always  something  in  the  situation 
of  women  which  secures  a  fidelity  to  the  idiom.  From 
the  greater  excitability  of  females,  and  the  superior 
vivacity  of  their  feelings,  they  will  be  liable  to  far 
more  irritations  from  wounded  sensibilities.  It  is  for 
such  occasions  chiefly  that  they  seek  to  be  effective  in 
their  language.  Now,  there  is  not  in  the  world  so 
certain  a  guarantee  for  pure  idiomatic  diction,  without 
tricks  or  affectation,  as  a  case  of  genuine  excitement. 
Real  situations  are  always  pledges  of  a  real  natural 
language.  It  is  in  counterfeit  passion,  in  the  mimical 
situations  of  novels,  or  in  poems  that  are  efforts  of 
ingenuity,  and  no  ebullitions  of  absolute  unsimulated 
feeling,  that  female  writers  endeavor  to  sustain  their 
own  jaded  sensibility,  or  to  reinforce  the  languishing 
interest  of  their  readers  by  extravagances  of  language. 
No  woman  in  this  world,  under  a  movement  of  resent- 
ment from  a  false  accusation,  or  from  jealousy,  or  from 
confidence  betrayed,  ever  was  at  leisure  to  practise 
vagaries  of  caprice  in  the  management  of  her  mother 
tongue  ;  strength  of  real  feeling  shuts  out  all  tempta- 
tion to  the  affectation  of  false  feeling. 

Hence  the  purity  of  the  female  Byzantine  Greek. 
Such  caprices  as  they  had  took  some  other  course 
and  found  some  other  vent  than  through  their  mother 
tongue.     Hence,  also,  the  purity  of  female  English 


STTLE.  187 

Would  you  desire  at  this  day  to  read  our  noble  lan- 
guage in  its  native  beauty,  picturesque  from  idiomatic 
propriety,  racy  in  its  phraseology,  delicate  yet  sinewy 
in  its  composition  —  steal  the  mail-bags,  and  break 
open  all  the  letters  in  female  handwriting.  Three  out 
of  four  will  have  been  written  by  that  class  of  women 
who  have  the  most  leisure  and  the  most  interest  in  a 
correspondence  by  the  post  —  that  class  who  combine 
more  of  intelligence,  cultivation,  and  of  thoughtfulness, 
than  any  other  in  Europe  —  the  class  of  unmarried 
women  above  twenty-five  —  an  increasing  class ;  ^ 
women  who,  from  mere  dignity  of  character,  have 
renounced  all  prospects  of  conjugal  and  parental  life, 
rather  than  descend  into  habits  unsuitable  to  their 
birth.  Women  capable  of  such  sacrifices,  and  marked 
by  such  strength  of  mind,  may  be  expected  to  think 
with  deep  feeling,  and  to  express  themselves  (unless 
where  they  have  been  too  much  biased  by  bookish 
connections)  with  natural  grace.  Not  impossibly 
these  same  women,  if  required  to  come  forwai'd  in 
some  public  character,  might  write  ill  and  affectedly. 
They  would  then  have  their  free  natural  movement  of 
thought  distorted  into  some  accommodation  to  artificial 
standards,  amongst  which  they  might  happen  to  select 
a  bad  one  for  imitation.  But  in  their  letters  they  write 
under  the  benefit  of  their  natural  advantages  ;  not 
warped,  on  the  one  hand,  into  that  constraint  or 
awkwardness  which  is  the  inevitable  effect  of  con- 
scious exposure  to  public  gaze  ;  yet,  on  the  other,  not 
left  to  vacancy  or  the  chills  of  apathy,  but  sustained 
by  some  deep  sympathy  between  themselves  and  their 
correspondents. 

So  far  as  concerns  idiomatic  English,  we  are  satis- 


188  STYLE. 

fied  from  the  many  beautiful  female  letters  wliich  we 
have  heard  upon  chance  occasions  from  every  quarter 
of  the  empire,  that  they,  the  educated  women  of 
Great  Britain  —  above  all,  the  interesting  class  of 
women  unmarried  upon  scruples  of  sexual  honor  — 
and  also  (as  in  Constantinople  of  old)  the  nurseries 
of  Great  Britain,  are  the  true  and  best  depositaries  of 
the  old  mother  idiom.  But  we  must  not  forget,  that 
though  this  is  another  term  for  what  is  good  in  Eng- 
lish, when  we  are  talking  of  a  human  and  a  popular 
interest,  there  is  a  separate  use  of  the  language,  as  in 
the  higher  forms  of  history  or  philosophy,  which  ought 
not  to  be  idiomatic.  As  respects  that  which  is,  it  is 
remarkable  that  the  same  orders  cling  to  the  ancient 
purity  of  diction  amongst  ourselves  who  did  so  in 
pagan  Rome  —  viz.  women,  for  the  reasons  just  no- 
ticed, and  people  of  rank.  So  much  has  this  been 
the  tendency  in  England,  that  we  know  a  person  of 
great  powers,  but  who  has  in  all  things  a  one-sided 
taste,  and  is  so  much  a  lover  of  idiomatic  English  as 
to  endure  none  else,  who  professes  to  read  no  writer 
since  Lord  Chesterfield.  It  is  certain  that  this  accom- 
plished nobleman,  who  has  been  most  unjustly  treated 
from  his  unfortunate  collision  with  a  national  favorite, 
and  in  part  also  from  the  laxity  of  his  moral  princi- 
ples, where,  however,  he  spoke  worse  than  he  thought, 
wrote  with  the  ease  and  careless  grace  of  a  high-bred 
gentleman.  But  his  style  is  not  peculiar :  it  has 
always  been  the  style  of  his  order.  After  making  the 
Droper  allowance  for  the  continual  new  infusions  into 
our  peerage  from  the  bookish  class  of  lawyers,  and 
for  some  modifications  derived  from  the  learned  class 
of  spiritual  peers,  the  tone  of  Lord  Chestorfield  has 


STYLE. 


189 


llways  been  the  tone  of  our  old  aristocracy  ;  a  tone 
of  elegance  and  propriety,  above  all  things  free  from 
the  stiffness  of  pedantry  or  academic  rigor,  and  obey- 
ing  Csesar's  rule  of  shunning   tanqumn  scopulum  any 
insolens  verbum.     It  is,  indeed,  through   this   channel 
that  the  solicitudes  of  our  British  nobility  have  always 
flowed  :   other  qualities  might  come  and  go  according 
to  the  temperament  of  the  individual ;  but  what  in  all 
gen  ^rations   constituted   an  object  of  horror  for  that 
class,   was   bookish  precision    and   professional    pecu- 
liarity.    From  the  free  popular  form  of  our  great  pub- 
lic schools,  to  which  nine  out  of  ten  amongst  our  old 
nobility  resorted,  it  happened  unavoidably  that  they 
were  not  equally  clear  of  popular  vulgarities  ;  indeed, 
from  another  cause,  that  could  not  have  been  avoided 
—  for  it  is  remarkable  that  a  connection,  as  close  as 
through  an   umbilical    cord,   has    always  been    main- 
tained between   the  very  highest   orders  of  oux   aris- 
tocracy and   the  lowest  of  our   democracy,  by  means 
of  nurses.     The   nurses   and  immediate  personal  at- 
tendants of  all   classes   come   from   the  same  sources, 
most  commonly  from  the  peasantry  of  the  land  ;   they 
import  into  all  families  alike,  into  the  highest  and  the 
lowest,  the   coarsest   expressions  from  the  vernacular 
language  of  anger  and  contempt.     Whence,  for  exam- 
ple, it  was,  that   about  five  or  six  years  ago,  when  a 
new  novel  circulated  in  London,  with  a  private  under- 
standing  that  it  was  a  juvenile   efi"ort  from  two  very 
youEg  ladies  of  the  very  highest  rank,  nobody  who 
reflected  at  all  could  feel  much  surprise  that  one  of 
rhe  characters  should  express   her  self-esteem  by  the 
popular  phrase  that  she  did  not  '  think  small  beer  of 
herself.'     Equally   in   its   faults   and   its   merits,  the 


190  STYLE. 

language  of  high  life  has  always  tended  to  simplicity 
and  the  vernacular  ideal,  recoiling  from  every  mode 
of  bookishness.  And  in  this,  as  in  so  many  other 
instances,  it  is  singular  to  note  the  close  resemblance 
between  polished  England  and  polished  Rome.  Au- 
gustus Caesar  was  so  little  able  to  enter  into  any 
artificial  forms  of  tortuous  obscurities  of  ambitious 
rhetoric,  that  he  could  not  so  much  as  understand 
them.  Even  the  old  antique  forms  of  language, 
where  it  happened  that  they  had  become  obsolete, 
were  to  him  disgusting.  And  probably  the  main  bond 
of  connection  between  himself  and  Horace  was  their 
common  and  excessive  hatred  of  obscurity ;  from 
which  quality,  indeed,  the  very  intellectual  defects  of 
both,  equally  with  their  good  taste,  alienated  them  to 
intensity. 

The  pure  racy  idiom  of  colloquial  or  household 
English,  we  have  insisted,  must  be  looked  for  in  the 
circles  of  well-educated  women  not  too  closely  con- 
nected with  books.  It  is  certain  that  books,  in  any 
language,  will  tend  to  encourage  a  diction  too  remote 
from  the  style  of  spoken  idiom  ;  whilst  the  greater 
solemnity,  and  the  more  ceremonial  costume  of  regu- 
lar literature  must  often  demand  such  a  non-idiomatic 
diction,  upon  mere  principles  of  good  taste.  But  why 
:s  it  that  in  our  day  literature  has  taken  so  determinate 
a  swing  towards  this  professional  language  of  books, 
as  to  justify  some  fears  that  the  other  extreme  of  the 
free  colloquial  idiom  will  perish  as  a  living  dialect  ? 
The  apparent  cause  lies  in  a  phenomenon  of  modern 
life,  which,  on  other  accounts  also,  is  entitled  to 
anxious  consideration.  It  is  in  newspapers  that  we 
must  look  for  the  main  reading  of  this  generation 


STYLE.  191 

and  in  newspapers,  therefore,  we  must  seek  for  the 
causes  operating  upon  the  style  of  the  age.  Seventy 
years  ago  this  tendency  in  political  journals  to  usurp 
upon  the  practice  of  books,  and  to  mould  the  style  of 
writers,  was  noticed  by  a  most  ar  iite  observer,  himself 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  writers  in  the  class  of  satiric 
sketches  and  personal  historians  that  any  nation  has 
produced.  Already,  before  1770,  the  late  Lord 
Oxford  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  to  any  man  who 
consulted  him  on  the  cultivation  of  style  — '  Style  is 
it  that  you  want  ?  Oh,  go  and  look  into  the  news- 
papers for  a  style.'  This  was  said  half  contemptu- 
ously and  half  seriously.  But  the  e\-il  has  now 
become  overwhelming.  One  single  number  of  a 
London  morning  paper,  which  in  half  a  century  has 
expanded  from  the  size  of  a  dinner  napkin  to  that  of 
a  breakfast  tablecloth,  from  that  to  a  carpet,  and  will 
soon  be  forced,  by  the  expansions  of  public  business, 
into  something  resembling  the  mainsail  of  a  frigate, 
already  is  equal  in  printed  matter  to  a  very  large 
octavo  volume.  Every  old  woman  in  the  nation  now 
reads  daily  a  vast  miscellany  in  one  volume  royal 
octavo.  The  evil  of  this,  as  regards  the  quality  of 
knowledge  communicated,  admits  of  no  remedy. 
Public  business,  in  its  whole  unwieldy  compass,  must 
always  form  the  subject  of  these  daily  chronicles. 
Nor  is  there  much  room  to  expect  any  change  in  the 
style.  The  e-vdl  effect  of  this  upon  the  style  of  the 
age  may  be  reduced  to  two  forms.  Formerly  the 
natural  impulse  of  every  i»an  was,  spontaneously  to 
use  the  language  of  life  ;  the  language  of  books  was 
$,  secondary  attainment  not  made  without  effort.  Now, 
on  Ihe   contrary,   the   daily  composers  of  newspapers 


192  STYLE. 

have  so  long  dealt  in  tlie  professional  idiom  of  books, 
as  to  have  brought  it  home  to  every  reader  in  the 
nation  who  does  not  violently  resist  it  by  some  domes- 
tic advantages.  Time  was,  within  our  own  remem- 
brance, that  if  you  sbould  have  heard,  in  passing 
along  the  street,  from  any  old  apple-woman  such  a 
phrase  as  '  I  will  avail  myself  of  your  kindness,' 
forthwith  you  would  have  shied  like  a,  skittish  horse 
—  you  would  have  run  away  in  as  much  terror  as 
any  old  Roman  upon  those  occasions  when  Bos  loque- 
hatur.  At  present  you  swallow  such  marvels  as 
matters  of  course.  The  whole  artificial  dialect  of 
books  has  come  into  play  as  the  dialect  of  ordinary 
life.  This  is  one  form  of  the  evil  impressed  iipon 
our  style  by  journalism  ;  a  dire  monotony  of  bookish 
idiom  has  encrusted  and  stifiened  all  native  freedom 
of  expression,  like  some  scaly  leprosy  or  elephantiasis, 
barking  and  hide-binding  the  fine  natural  pulses  of 
the  elastic  flesh.  Another  and  almost  a  worse  evil 
has  established  itself  in  the  prevailing  structure  of 
sentences.  fEvery  man  who  has  had  any  experience 
in  writing,  knows  how  natural  it  is  for  hurry  and 
fulness  of  matter  to  discharge  itself  by  vast  sentences. 
Involving  clause  within  clause  ad  infinitum  —  hoAv 
difficult  it  is,  and  how  much  a  work  of  time,  to  break 
up  this  huge  fasciculus  of  cycle  and  epicycle  into  a 
graceful  succession  of  sentences,  long  intermingled 
with  short,  each  modifying  the  other,  and  arising 
musically  by  links  of  spontaneous  connection.  Now 
the  plethoric  form  of  period,  this  monster  model  of 
sentence,  bloated  with  decomplex  intercalations,  and 
exactly  repeating  the  foi-m  of  syntax  which  distin- 
guishes an   act  of  Parliament,  is  the  prevailino;  mode. 


5.  193 

n  newspaper  eloquence.!  Crude  undigested  masses 
of  suggestion,  furnislun|  rather  raw  materials  for 
composition  and  jotting*  for  the  memory,  than  any 
formal  developments  of  the  ideas,  describe  the  quality 
of  writing  which  must  prevail  in  journalism  :  not  from 
defect  of  talents,  which  are  at  this  day  of  that  supe- 
rior class  which  may  be  presumed  from  the  superior 
importance  of  the  function  itself ;  but  from  the  neces- 
sities of  hurry  and  of  instant  compliance  with  an 
instant  emergency,  granting  no  possibility  for  revision, 
or  opening  for  amended  thought,  which  are  evils 
attached  to  the  flying  velocities  of  public  business. 

As    to    structure    of    sentence,    and    the    periodic 
involution,  that  scarcely  admits  of  being  exemplified 
in  the  conversation  of  those  who  do  not  write.    But 
the    choice    of   phraseology   is     naturally    and    easily 
echoed  in  the  colloquial  forms  of  those  who  surrender 
themselves  to   such  an  influence.      To  mark  in  what 
degree  this  contagion  of  bookishness  has  spread,  and 
how  deeply  it  has  moulded  the  habits  of  expression  in 
classes  naturally  the  least  likely  to  have  been  reached 
by  a  revolution  so  artificial  in  its   character,  we  will 
report  a  single  record  from   the  memorials  of  our  own 
experience.     Some  eight  years  ago,  we  had  occasion 
to  look  for  lodgings  in  a  newly-built  suburb  of  London. 
The  mistress  of  the  house,  (with  respect  to  whom  we 
have  nothing  to  report  more  than  that  she  was  in  the 
worst  sense  a  \Tilgar  woman,  that  is,  not  merely  a  low- 
bred   person  —  so   much   might   have    been    expected 
from  her  occupation  —  but  morally  vulgar  by  the  evi- 
ience  of  her  own   complex  precautions  against  fraud, 
reasonable  enough  in  so  dangerous  a  capital,  but  not 
calling  for  the  very  ostentatious  display  of  them  which 
13 


194  STTIiE. 

she  obtruded  upon  us,)  was  in  regular  training,  it  ap- 
peared, as  a  student  of  newspapers.  She  had  no  chil- 
dren :  the  newspapers  were  her  children.  There  lay 
her  studies  ;  that  branch  of  learning  constituted  her 
occupation,  from  morning  to  night :  and  the  following 
were  amongst  the  words  which  she  —  this  semibarba- 
rian —  poured  from  her  cornucopia  during  the  very  few 
minutes  of  our  interview  ;  which  interview  was  brought 
to  an  abrupt  issue  by  mere  nervous  agitation  upon  our 
part.  The  words,  as  noted  down  within  an  hour  of 
the  occasion,  and  after  allowing  a  fair  time  for  our 
recovery,  were  these  :  —  first,  '  Category  ; '  secondly, 
'  predicament ;  '  (where,  by  the  way,  from  the  twofold 
iteration  of  the  idea  —  Greek  and  Roman  —  it  appears 
that  the  old  lady  was  '  twice  armed ;  ') — thirdly,  '  indi- 
viduality ;  '  fourthly, '  procrastination  ; '  fifthly,  '  speak- 
ing diplomatically,  would  not  wish  to  commit  herself; ' 
sixthly,  '  would  spontaneously  adapt  the  several  modes 
of  domestication  to  the  reciprocal  interests,'  &c.  ;  and 
finally,  (which  word  it  was  that  settled  us  ;  we  heard 
it  as  we  reached  the  topmost  stair  on  the  second  floor ; 
and,  without  further  struggle  against  our  instincts, 
round  we  wheeled,  rushed  down  forty-five  stairs,  and 
exploded  from  the  house  with  a  fury  causing  us  to 
impinge  against  an  obese  or  protuberant  gentleman 
and  calling  for  mutual  explanations  ;  a  result  which 
nothing  could  account  for,  but  a  steel  bow,  or  musta- 
chios  on  the  lip  of  an  elderly  woman ;  meantime  the 
fatal  word  was,)  seventhly,  '  anteriorly.'  Concerning 
which  word  we  solemnly  depose  and  make  affidavit, 
that  neither  from  man,  woman,  nor  book,  had  we  evei 
heard  it  before  this  unique  rencontre  with  this  abomi- 
ijable  woman  on  the  staircase.     The  occasion  whici 


STTLE.  195 

'urnislied  the  excuse  for  such  a  word  was  this  :  From 
the  staircase  window  we  saw  a  large  shed  in  the  rear 
of  the  house  :  apprehending  some  nuisance  of  '  manu- 
facturing industry'  in  our  neighborhood,  —  'What's 
that  ?  '  we  demanded.     Mark  the  answer  :   '  A  shed  ; 

and  anteriorly  to  the  existing   shed   there  was  ;  ' 

xohat  there  was,  posterity  must  consent  to  have  wrapt 
up  in  darkness,  for  there  came  on  our  nervous  seizure, 
which  intercepted  further  communication.  But  ob- 
Berve,  as  a  point  which  took  away  any  gleam  of  con- 
solation from  the  case,  the  total  absence  of  all  malaprop 
picturesqueness,  that  might  have  defeated  its  deadly 
action  upon  the  nervous  system.  No  :  it  is  due  to  the 
integrity  of  her  disease,  and  to  the  completeness  of  our 
suffering,  that  we  should  attest  the  unimpeachable  cor 
rectness  of  her  words  and  of  the  syntax  by  which  she 
connected  them. 

Now,  if  we  could  suppose  the  case  that  the  old 
household  idiom  of  the  land  were  generally  so  extin- 
guished amongst  us  as  it  was  in  this  particular  instance 

—  if  we  could  imagine,  as  a  universal  result  of  journal- 
ism, that  a  coarse  unlettered  woman,  having  occasion 
to  say,  '  this  or  that  stood  in  such  a  place  before  thf- 
present  shed,'  should  take  as  a  natural  or  current  for- 
mula, '  anteriorly  to  the  existing  shed  there  stood,'  &c. 

—  what  would  be  the  final  effect  upon  our  literature  ? 
Pedantry,  though  it  were  unconscious  pedantry,  once 
steadily  diffused  through  a  nation  as  to  the  very  mould? 
of  its  thinking,  and  the  general  tendencies  of  its  ex- 
pression, could  not  but  stiffen  the  natural  graces  of 
composition,  and  weave  fetters  about  the  free  move- 
ment of  human  thought.  This  would  interfere  as 
effectually  with  our  power  of  enjoying  much  that  is 


196 


STYLE. 


excellent  in  our  past  literature,  as  it  would  with  our 
future  powers  of  producing.  And  such  an  agency  has 
been  too  long  at  work  amongst  us,  not  to  have  already 
accomplished  some  part  of  these  separate  evils. 
Amongst  women  of  education,  as  we  have  argued 
above,  standing  aloof  from  literature,  and  less  uni- 
formly drawing  their  intellectual  sustenance  from  news- 
papers, the  deadening  effects  have  been  partially 
counteracted.  Here  and  there,  amongst  individuals, 
alive  to  the  particular  evils  of  the  age,  and  watching 
the  very  set  of  the  current,  there  may  have  been  even 
a  more  systematic  counteraction  applied  to  the  mis- 
chief. But  the  great  evil  in  such  cases  is  this  —  that 
we  cannot  see  the  extent  of  the  changes  wrought  or 
being  wrought,  from  having  ourselves  partaken  in  them. 
Tempora  mutantur ;  and  naturally,  if  we  could  review 
them  with  the  neutral  eye  of  a  stranger,  it  would  be 
impossible  for  us  not  to  see  the  extent  of  those  changes. 
But  our  eye  is  not  neutral :  we  also  have  partaken  in 
the  changes  ;  et  nos  mutamur  in  illis.  And  this  fact 
disturbs  the  power  of  appreciating  those  changes. 
Every  one  of  us  would  have  felt,  sixty  years  ago,  that 
the  general  tone  and  coloring  of  a  style  was  stiff,  book- 
ish, pedantic,  which,  from  the  habituation  of  our  or- 
gans, we  now  feel  to  be  natural  and  within  the  privilege 
of  learned  art.  Direct  objective  qualities  it  is  always 
by  comparison  easy  to  measure  ;  but  the  difficulty 
commences  when  we  have  to  combine  with  this  outei 
measurement  of  the  object  another  corresponding 
measurement  of  the  subjective  or  inner  qualities  by 
which  we  apply  the  measure  ;  that  is,  when  besides 
the  objects  projected  to  a  distance  from  the  spectator 
we  have  to  allow  for  variations  or  distuibances  in  the 


SIYIiE. 


197 


^ery  eye  which  surveys  them.  The  eye  cannot  see 
Itself;  we  cannot  project  from  ourselves,  and  contem- 
plate as  an  object  our  own  contemplating  faculty,  or 
appreciate  our  own  appreciating  power.  Biases,  there- 
fore, or  gradual  warpings,  that  have  occurred  m  our 
critical  faculty  as  applied  to  style,  we  cannot  allow 
for ;  and  these  biases  will  unconsciously  mask,  to  our 
perceptions,  an  amount  of  change  in  the  quality  of 
popular  style  such  as  we  could  not  easily  credit. 

Separately    from  this  change  for  the  worse  in  the 
droopmg  idiomatic  freshness  of  our  diction,  which  is  a 
change  that  has  been  going  on  for  a  century,  the  othei 
characteristic  defect  of  tbis  age  Hes  in  the  tumid  and 
tumultuary    structure   of    our    sentences.      The    one 
change  has  partly  grown  out  of  the  other.     Ever  since 
a  more  bookish  air   was  impressed  upon  composition 
without  much  effort    by  the   Latinized   and  artificial 
phraseology,  by  forms   of  expression   consecrated   to 
books,  and  by  '  long-tailed  words  in  osity  and  ation, 
either  because  writers  felt  that  already,  in  this  one  act 
of  preference  sho^^-n  to  the  artificial  vocabulary,  they 
had  done  enough  to  establish  a  deferential  character  of 
regular  composition,  and  on  that  consideration  thought 
themselves  entitled  to  neglect  the  combination  of  then 
words  into  sentences  and  periods  ;  or  because  there  i3 
a  real  natural  sympathy  between  the  Latin  phraseology 
and  a  Latin  structure  of  sentence  ;  certain  it  is  and 
remarkable,  that    our  popular  style,   in  the  common 
limited  sense  of  arrangement  applied  to  words,  or  the 
^yntaxes  of  sentences,  has  labored  with  two  faults  that 
might  have  been  thought  incompatible  :  it  has  been 
artificial,  by  artifices  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  powers 
of  the  Latin  language,  and  yet  at  the  very  same  time 


198  STYLE. 

careless  and  disordinate.  There  is  a  strong  idea  ex- 
pressed by  the  Latin  word  inconditus,  disorganized, 
or  rather  unorganized.  Now,  in  spite  of  its  artificial 
bias,  that  is  the  very  epithet  which  will  best  character- 
ize our  newspaper  style.  To  be  viewed  as  susceptible 
of  organization,  such  periods  must  already  be  elaborate 
and  artificial ;  to  be  viewed  as  not  having  received  it, 
Buch  periods  must  be  careless. 

But  perhaps  the  very  best  illustration  of  all  this  will 
be  found  in  putting  the  case  of  English  style  into 
close  juxtaposition  with  the  style  of  the  French  and 
Germans  —  our  only  very  important  neighbors.  As 
leaders  of  civilization,  as  powers  in  an  intellectual 
sense,  there  are  but  three  nations  in  Europe  —  Eng- 
land, Germany,  France.  As  to  Spain,  and  Italy, 
outlying  extremities,  they  are  not  moving  bodies  ; 
they  rest  upon  the  past.  Russia  and  North  America 
are  the  two  bulwarks  of  Christendom  —  east  and  west. 
But  the  three  powers  at  the  centre  are  in  all  senses  the 
motive  forces  of  civilization.  In  all  things  they  have 
the  initiation  ;  and  they  preside. 

By  this  comparison  we  shall  have  the  advantage  of 
doing  what  the  French  express  by  sorienter  —  the 
Germans  by  sich  orientiren.  Learning  one  of  our 
bearings  on  the  compass,  we  shall  be  able  to  deduce 
the  rest ;  and  we  shall  be  able  to  conjecture  our 
valuation  as  respects  the  art,  by  finding  our  place 
amongst  the  artists. 

With  respect  to  French  style,  we  can  imagine  the 
astonishment  of  an  English  author,  practised  in  com- 
position, and  with  no  previous  knowledge  of  French 
literature,  who  should  first  find  himself  ranging  freely 
dmongst  a  French  library.     That  particular  fault  of 


STYLE.  199 

style  which  in  English  books  is  all  but  universal, 
absolutely  has  not  an  existence  in  the  French.  Speak- 
ing rigorously  and  to  the  very  letter  of  the  case,  we, 
upon  a  large  experience  in  French  literature,  affirm, 
that  it  would  be  nearly  impossible  (perhaps  strictly 
so)  to  cite  an  instance  of  that  cumbrous  and  imwieldy 
style  which  disfigures  English  composition  so  exten- 
sively. Enough  could  not  be  adduced  to  satisfy  the 
purpose  of  illustration.  And  to  make  a  Frenchman 
sensible  of  the  fault  as  a  possibility,  you  must  appeal 
to  some  translated  model. 

But  why  ?  The  cause  of  this  national  immunity 
from  a  fault  so  common  everywhere  else,  and  so 
natural,  when  we  look  into  the  producing  occasions, 
is  as  much  entitled  to  our  notice  as  the  immunity 
itself.  The  fault  is  inevitable,  as  one  might  fancy, 
to  two  conditions  of  mind  —  hurry  in  the  first  place, 
want  of  art  in  the  second.  The  French  must  be 
liable  to  these  disadvantages  as  much  as  their  neigh 
bors  :  by  what  magic  is  it  that  they  evade  them  or 
neutralize  them  in  the  result  ?  The  secret  lies  here ; 
beyond  all  nations,  by  constitutional  vivacity,  the 
French  are  a  nation  of  talkers  ;  and  the  model  of 
their  sentences  is  moulded  by  that  fact.  Conver- 
sation, which  is  a  luxury  for  other  nations,  is  for  them 
a  necessity  ;  by  the  very  law  of  their  peculiar  intellect 
and  of  its  social  training,  they  are  colloquial.  Hence 
it  happens,  that  there  are  no  such  people  endured  or 
evei  heard  of  in  France  as  aZloquial  wits ;  people 
who  talk  to  but  not  with  a  circle ;  the  very  finest  of 
dieir  ieaux  esprits  must  submit  to  the  equities  of 
conversation,  and  would  be  crushed  summarily  as 
Honsters,    if  they  were  to  seek    a   selfish  mode    of 


200  STYLE. 

display,  or  a  privilege  of  lecturing  any  audience  of 
a  salon  who  had  met  for  purposes  of  social  pleasure. 
'  De  monologue,'  as  Madame  de  Stael,  in  her  broken 
English,  described  this  mode  of  display  when  speak- 
ing of  Coleridge,  is  so  far  from  being  tolerated  in 
France  as  an  accomplishment,  that  it  is  not  even 
understood  as  a  disease.  This  kind  of  what  may  be 
called  irresponsible  talk,  when  a  man  runs  on  perpetuo 
tenore,  not  accountable  for  any  opinion  to  his  auditors, 
open  to  no  contradiction,  has  sometimes  procured  for 
a  man  in  England  the  affix  of  River  to  his  name : 
Labitur  et  labetur  in  omne  voluhilis  cBvum.  But  that 
has  been  in  cases  where  the  talking  impulse  was 
sustained  by  mere  vivacity  of  animal  spirits,  Mdthout 
knowledge  to  support  it,  and  liable  to  the  full  weight 
of  Archbishop  Huet's  sarcasm  —  that  it  was  a  diar- 
rhoea of  garrulity,  afluxe  de  houche.  But  in  cases  like 
that  of  Coleridge,  where  the  solitary  display,  if  selfish, 
is  still  dignified  by  a  pomp  of  knowledge,  and  a 
knowledge  which  you  feel  to  have  been  fused  and 
combined  by  the  genial  circumstances  of  the  speaker's 
position  in  the  centre  of  an  admiring  circle,  —  wc- 
English  do  still  recognize  the  metier  of  a  professional 
talker  as  a  privileged  mode  of  social  display.  People 
are  asked  to  come  and  hear  such  a  performer,  as  you 
form  a  select  party  to  hear  Thalberg  or  Paganini. 
The  thing  is  understood  at  least  with  us ;  right  or 
wrong,  there  is  an  understanding  amongst  the  com- 
pany that  you  are  not  to  interrupt  the  great  man  of 
the  night.  You  may  prompt  him  by  a  question  ;  you 
may  set  him  in  motion  ;  but  to  begin  arguing  against 
nim  would  be  felt  as  not  less  unseasonable,  than  to 
insist  on  whistling  Jim  Crow  during  the  hravuras  anC 
\ours  de  force  of  the  great  musical  artists. 


STTUE.  201 

In  France,  tiierefore,  from  the  intense  adaptation  of 
the  national  mind  to  real  colloquial  intercourse,  foi 
which  reciprocation  is  indispensable,  the  form  of  sen- 
tence in  use  is  adjusted  to  that  primary  condition; 
brief,  terse,  simple  ;  shaped  to  avoid  misunderstand- 
ing, and  to  meet  the  impatience  of  those  who  are 
waiting  for  their  tui'n.  People  who  wnrite  rapidly 
everywhere  write  as  they  talk :  it  is  impossible  to  do 
otherwise.  Taking  a  pen  into  his  hand,  a  man  frames 
his  periods  exactly  as  he  would  do  if  addressing  an 
audience.  So  far  the  Englishman  and  the  Frenchman 
are  upon  the  same  level.  Suppose  them,  therefore, 
both  preparing  to  speak :  an  Englishman  in  such  a 
situation  has  no  urgent  motive  for  turning  his  thoughts 
to  any  other  object  than  the  prevailing  one  of  the 
moment  —  viz.  how  best  to  convey  his  meaning. 
That  object  weighs  also  with  the  Frenchman  ;  but  he 
has  a  previous,  a  paramount,  object  to  watch  —  the 
necessity  of  avoiding  des  longueurs.  The  rights,  the 
equities  of  conversation  are  but  dimly  present  to  the 
mind  of  the  Englishman.  From  the  mind  of  a 
Frenchman  they  are  never  absent.  To  an  English- 
man, the  right  of  occupying  the  attention  of  the 
company  seems  to  inhere  in  things  rather  than  in 
person :  if  the  particular  subject  under  discussion 
should  happen  to  be  a  grave  one,  then,  in  right  of 
that,  and  not  by  any  right  of  his  own,  a  speaker  will 
seem  to  an  Englishman  invested  with  the  privilege  of 
drawing  largely  upon  the  attention  of  a  company. 
But  to  a  Frenchman  this  right  of  participation  in  the 
talk  is  a  personal  right,  which  cannot  be  set  aside  by 
any  possible  claims  in  the  subject:  it  passes  by  neces- 
sity to  and  fro,  backwards  and  forwards,  between  the 


g02  STYLE. 

several  persons  who  are  present ;  and,  as  in  the 
games  of  battledore  and  shuttlecock,  or  of  '  hunt  the 
slipper,'  the  momentary  subject  of  interest  never  car 
settle  or  linger  for  any  length  of  time  in  any  one 
individual,  without  violating  the  rules  of  the  sport,  or 
suspending  its  movement.  Inevitably,  therefore,  the 
structure  of  sentence  must  forever  be  adapted  to  this 
primary  function  of  the  French  national  intellect  — 
the  function  of  communicativeness,  and  to  the  neces- 
sities (for  to  the  French  they  are  necessities)  of  social 
intercourse. 

Hence  it  is  that  in  French  authors,  whatever  may 
otherwise  be  the  differences  of  their  minds,  or  the 
differences  of  their  themes,  uniformly  we  find  the 
periods  short,  rapid,  unelaborate  —  Pascal  or  Helve- 
tius,  Condillac  or  Rousseau,  Montesquieu  or  Voltaire, 
Buffon  or  Duclos,  —  all  alike  are  terse,  perspicuous, 
brief.  Even  Mirabeau  or  Chateaubriand,  so  much 
modified  by  foreign  intercourse,  in  this  point  adhere 
to  their  national  models.  Even  Bossuet  or  Bourda- 
loue,  where  the  diffusiveness  and  amplitude  of  oratory 
might  have  been  pleaded  as  a  dispensation,  are  not 
more  licentious  in  this  respect  than  their  compatriots. 
One  rise  in  every  sentence,  one  gentle  descent,  —  that 
is  the  law  for  French  composition ;  even  too  monoto- 
nously so  —  and  thus  it  happens  that  such  a  thing  as  a 
long  or  an. involved  sentence  could  not  be  produced 
from  French  literature,  though  a  sultan  were  to  offer 
his  daughter  in  marriage  to  the  man  who  should  find 
it.  Whereas  now,  amongst  us  English,  not  only  is 
the  too  general  tendency  of  our  sentences  towards 
liyperbolical  length,  but  it  will  be  found  continually 
-hat  instead  of  one  rise  and  one  corresponding  fall  - 


STTIiE. 


203 


one  arsis  and  one  thesis  —  there  are  many.  Flux  and 
reflux,  swell  and  cadence,  tliat  is  the  movement  for  a 
sentence  ;  but  our  modern  sentences  agitate  us  by 
roUin-  fires,  after  the  fashion  of  those  internal 
earthquakes  that,  not  content  with  one  throe,  run 
along  spasmodically  like  boys  playing  at  what  is 
called  '  drake-stone.' 

It  is  not  often  that  a  single  fault  can  produce  any 
vast   amount  of  evil .     But  there  are  cases  where  it 
does  ;  and  this  is  one  ;  the  effect  of  weariness  and  of 
repulsion,  which  may  arise  from  this  single  vice  of 
unwieldy  comprehensiveness  in  the  structure  of   sen- 
tences, cannot  better  be  illustrated  than  by  a  frank 
exposure  of  what  often  happens  to  ourselves,  and  (as 
we  differ  as  to   this  case  only  by  consciously  noticmg 
what  all  feel)  must  often  happen  to  others.     In  the 
evening,    Avhen  it  is   natural   that  we   should    feel  _  a 
cravin-  for  rest,  some  book  lies  near  us  which  is  writ- 
ten in°a  style,  clear,  tranquil,  easy  to  follow.     Just  at 
that  moment  comes  in  the  wet   newspaper,  dripping 
vith  the  dewy  freshness  of  its  news  ;  and  even  m  its 
parliamentary  memorials  promising  so  much  mterest, 
that    let  them  be  treated  in  what  manner  they  may 
merely  for  the  subjects,  they  are  often  commandmgly 
attractive.     The   attraction  indeed  is  but  too  potent, 
the  interest  but  too   exciting.     Yet,  after  all,  many 
times  we  lay  aside  the  journal,  and  we  acquiesce  m 
Jx,  rentier  stimulation  of  the  book.    Simply  the  news 
ve  may  read  ;  but  the  discussions,  whether  direct  from 
the  editor,  or  reported  from  the  Parliament,  we  refuse 
or  we  delay.     And  why  ?     It  is  the  subject,  perhaps 
you  think,  it  is  the  great  political  question  -  too  agi- 
lating  by  the  consequences  it  may  happen  to  involve. 


204  STYLE. 

No.  All  this,  if  treated  in  a  winning  style,  we  could 
bear.  It  is  the  effort,  the  toil,  the  exertion  of  mind 
requisite  to  follow  the  discussion  through  endless  and 
labyrinthine  sentences  —  this  it  is  which  compels  us 
to  forego  the  journal,  or  to  lay  it  aside  until  the  next 
morning. 

Those  who  are  not  accustomed  to  watch  the  effects 
of  composition  upon  the  feelings,  or  have  had  little 
experience  in  voluminous  reading  pursued  for  weeks, 
would  scarcely  imagine  how  much  of  downright  physi- 
cal exhaustion  is  produced  by  what  is  technically  called 
the  periodic  style  of  writing  :  it  is  not  the  length,  the 
antqarToloyiay  the  paralytic  flux  of  words  :  it  is  not 
even  the  cumbrous  involution  of  parts  within  parts, 
separately  considered,  that  bears  so  heavily  upon  the 
attention.  It  is  the  suspense,  the  holding-on,  of  the 
mind  until  what  is  called  the  anoSoatg  or  coming  round 
of  the  sentence  commences ;  this  it  is  which  wears  out 
"the  faculty  of  attention.  A  sentence,  for  example, 
begins  with  a  series  of  ifs;  perhaps  a  dozen  lines 
are  occupied  with  expanding  the  conditions  under 
which  something  is  affirmed  or  denied :  here  you 
cannot  dismiss  and  have  done  with  the  ideas  as  you 
go  along ;  all  is  hypothetic ;  all  is  suspended  in  air. 
The  conditions  are  not  fully  to  be  understood  until  you 
are  acquainted  with  the  dependency  ;  you  must  give  a 
separate  attention  to  each  clause  of  this  complex  hy- 
pothesis, and  yet  having  done  that  by  a  painful  effort, 
you  have  done  nothing  at  all ;  for  you  must  exercise 
a  reacting  attention  through  the  corresponding  lattei 
section,  in  order  to  follow  out  its  relations  to  all  parts 
of  the  hypothesis  which  sustained  it.  In  fact,  under 
»he   rude   yet   also   artificial   character  of  newspape» 


STYLE.  205 

style,  each  separate  monstor  period  is  a  vast  arch, 
which,  not  receiving  its  keystone,  not  being  locked 
into  self-supporting  cohesion,  until  you  nearly  reach 
its  close,  imposes  of  necessity  upon  the  unhappy  reader 
all  the  onus  of  its  ponderous  weight  through  the  main 
process  of  its  construction.  The  continued  repetition 
of  so  Atlantean  an  effort  soon  overwhelms  the  patience 
of  any  reader,  and  establishes  at  length  that  habitual 
feeling  which  causes  him  to  shrink  from  the  specula- 
tions of  journalists,  or  (which  is  more  likely)  to  adopt 
a  worse  habit  than  absolute  neglect,  which  we  shaU 
notice  immediately. 

Meantime,  as  we  have  compared  ourselves  on  this 
important  point  with  the  French,  let  us  now  complete 
our  promise,  by  noticing  our  relation  in  the  same  point 
to  the  Germans.  Even  on  its  own  account,  and  with- 
out any  \iew  to  our  present  purpose,  the  character  of 
German  prose  is  an  object  of  legitimate  astonishment. 
Whatever  is  bad  in  our  own  ideal  of  prose  style,  what- 
ever is  repulsive  in  our  own  practice,  we  see  there 
carried  to  the  most  outrageous  excess.  Herod  is  out- 
heroded,  Sternhold  is  out-sternholded,  with  a  zealotry 
of  extravagance  that  really  seems  like  wilful  burlesque. 
Lessing,  Herder,  Paul  Richter,  and  Lichtenberg,  with 
some  few  beside,  either  prompted  by  nature  or  trained 
upon  foreign  models,  have  avoided  the  besetting  sin 
of  German  prose.  Any  man  of  distinguished  talent, 
whose  attention  has  been  once  called  steadily  to  this 
subject,  cannot  fail  to  avoid  it.  The  misfortune  of 
most  writers  has  been,  that  once  occupied  with  the 
mterest  of  things,  and  overwhelmed  by  the  embarrass- 
ments of  disputed  doctrines,  they  never  advert  to  any 
question  affecting  what  they  view,  by  comparison,  as 


206  STYLE. 

a  trifle.     The  ^'o  docendum,  the  thing  to  be  taught,  has 
availed  to  obscure  or  even  to  annihilate  for  their  eyes 
every  anxiety  as  to  the  mode  of  teaching.     And,  as 
one  conspicuous  example  of  careless  style  acts  by  its 
authority  to  create   many  more,  we  need  not  wonder 
at  the  results,  even  when  they  reach  a  point  of  what 
may  be  called  monstrous.     Among  ten  thousand  of- 
fenders, who  carry  their  neglect  of  style  even  to  that 
point,  we  would  single  out   Imraanuel  Kant.     Such  is 
the  value   of   his    philosophy    in    some    sections,   and 
partially  it  is  so  very  capable  of   a  lucid  treatment, 
intelligible  to   the   plainest  man   of  reflective   habits, 
that  within  no  long  interval  we  shall  certainly  see  him 
naturalized   amongst  ourselves ;    there   are   particular 
applications   of   his    philosophy   not   contemplated    by 
himself,   for   which   we   venture    to    predict    that    the 
Christian  student  will  ultimately  be  thankful,  when  the 
elementary  principles  have  been  brought  under  a  clear 
light  of  interpretation.     Attention  will  then  be  forced 
upon  his  style,  and   facts  will  come  forward  not  credi- 
ble  without    experimental    proof.     For    instance,    we 
have   lying  before   us   at   this  moment  his  Critik  der 
Practischen  Vernunft  in  the  unpirated  edition  of  Hart- 
noch  —  the  respectable  publisher  of  all   Kant's   great 
works.     The  text  is  therefore  authentic  :   and  being  a 
4th  edition,  (Riga,  1797,)  must  be  presumed  to  have 
benefited  by  the  author's  careful  revision  :  we  have  no 
time  for  search,  but  on  barely  throwing  open  the  book, 
we  see  a  sentence  at  pp.  70,  71,  exactly  covering  one 
whole  octavo  page  of  thirty-one  lines,  each  line  averag- 
,Ug  forty-five  to  forty-eight  letters.     Sentences  of  the 
same  calibre,  some  even  of  far  larger  hore,  we  have 
observed  in  this  and  other  works  of  the  same  author 


STYLE.  ^^' 


Ajid  it  is  not  the  fact  taken  as  an  occasional  possibility, 
it  is  the  prevailing  character  of  his  style,  that  we  insist 
on  as  the  most  formidable  barrier  to  the  study  of  his 
writings,  and  to  the    progress   of   what  will  soon  be 
acknowledged  as  important  in  his  principles.     A  sen- 
cence  is  viewed  by  him,  and  by  most  of  his  country- 
men,  as  a  rude   mould  or  elastic  form   admitting  of 
expansion  to  any  possible  extent :  it  is  laid  down  as  a 
rude    outline,  and    then   by  superstruction    and    epi- 
snperstruction  it  is  gradually  reared  to  a  giddy  altitude 
which   no    eye    can    follow.     Yielding  to  his  natural 
impulse  of  subjoining  all  additions,  or  exceptions,  or 
modifications  -  not  in  the  shape  of  separate   consecu- 
tive sentences,  but  as  intercalations  and  stuffings  of 
one  original  sentence,  Kant    might   naturally  enough 
have  written  a  book  from  beginning  to  end  m  one  vast 
hyperbolical  sentence.     We  sometimes  see  an  English 
Act  of  Parliament  which  does  literally  accomphsh  that 
end  by  an  artifice  which  in  law  has  a  purpose  and  a 
use.     Instead  of  laying  down  a  general   proposition, 
which  is  partially  false  until  it  has  received  its  proper 
restraints,  the  framer  of  the   act   endeavors   to   evade 
even   this  momentary  falsehood  by  coupling   the  re- 
straints with  the  very  primary  enunciation  of  the  truth: 
c  g   A   shall  be  entitled,  provided  always  that  he  is 
under  the  circumstances  of  e,  or  i,  or  o,  to  the  right  of 
X      Thus,   even   a  momentary  compliance  with    the 
false  notion  of  an  absolute  unconditional  claim  to  X 
is  evaded  ;  a  truth  which  is  only  a  conditional  truth, 
Is  stated  as  such  fi-om  the  first.     There  is,  thei-efore   a 
theoretic  use.    But  what  is  the  practical  result  ?  Why, 
mat  when  you  attempt  to  read  an  Act  of  Parliament 
WAere  the  exceptions,  the  secondary  exceptions  to  the 


208  STYLE. 

exceptions,  the  limitations  and  the  sublimitations,  de- 
scend seriatim,  by  a  vast  scale  of  dependencies,  the 
mind  finds  itself  overtasked  :  the  energy  of  the  most 
energetic  begins  to  droop ;  and  so  inevitable  is  that 
result,  that  Mr.  Pitt,  a  minister  unusually  accomplished 
for  such  process  by  constitution  of  mind  and  by  prac- 
tice, publicly  avowed  his  inability  to  follow  so  trying 
8  conflict  with  technical  embarrassments.  He  declared 
himself  to  be  lost  in  the  labyrinth  of  clauses  :  the 
Ariadne's  clue  was  wanting  for  his  final  extrication  : 
and  he  described  his  situation  at  the  end  with  the 
simplicity  natural  to  one  who  was  no  charlatan,  and 
Bought  for  no  reputation  by  the  tricks  of  a  funambulist : 
'  In  the  crowd  of  things  excepted  and  counter-excepted, 
he  really  ceased  to  understand  the  main  point  —  what 
it  was  that  the  law  allowed,  and  what  it  was  that  it 
disallowed.' 

We  might  have  made  our  readers  merry  with  the 
picture  of  German  prose  ;  but  we  must  not  linger.  It 
is  enough  to  say,  that  it  offers  the  counterpole  to  the 
French  style.  Our  own  popular  style,  and  (what  is 
worse)  the  tendency  of  our  own,  is  to  the  German 
extreme.  For  those  who  read  German  there  is  this 
advantage  —  that  German  prose,  as  Avritten  by  the 
mob  of  authors,  presents,  as  in  a  Brobdignagian  mirror, 
the  most  offensive  faults  of  our  own. 

But  these  faults  —  are  they  in  practice  so  wearisome 
and  exhausting  as  we  have  described  them  ?  Possibly 
not ;  and,  where  that  happens  to  be  the  case,  let  the 
reader  ask  himself  if  it  is  not  by  means  of  an  evasion 
worse  in  its  effects  than  any  fault  of  style  could  evei 
prove  in  its  most  exaggerated  form.  Shrinking,  through 
long  experience,  from  the  plethoric  form  of  cumulation 


8TTI,E.  209 

and  '  periodic  '  writing  in  wKich  the  journalist  supports 
or  explains  his  views,  every  man  who  puts  a  business 
value  upon  his  time,  slips  naturally  into  a  trick  of 
short-hand  reading.  It  is  more  even  by  the  effort  and 
tension  of  mind  required,  than  by  the  mere  loss  of  time, 
that  most  readers  are  repelled  from  the  habit  of  careful 
reading.  An  evil  of  modern  growth  is  met  by  a 
modern  remedy.  Every  man  gradually  learns  an  art 
of  catching  at  the  leading  words,  and  the  cardinal  or 
hinge-joints  of  transition,  which  proclaim  the  general 
course  of  a  writer's  speculation.  Now  it  is  very  true, 
and  is  sure  to  be  objected  —  that,  where  so  much  is 
certain  to  prove  mere  iteration  and  teasing  tautology, 
little  can  be  lost  by  this  or  any  other  process  of  abridg- 
ment. Certainly,  as  regards  the  particular  subject 
concerned,  there  may  be  no  room  to  apprehend  a 
serious  injury.  Not  there,  not  in  any  direct  interest, 
but  in  a  far  larger  interest  —  indirect  for  the  moment, 
but  the  most  direct  and  absolute  of  all  interests  for  an 
intellectual  being,  the  reader  suffers  a  permanent  de- 
bilitation. He  acquires  a  factitious  propensity,  he 
forms  an  incorrigible  habit  of  desultory  reading.  Now, 
to  say  of  a  man's  knowledge,  that  it  will  be  shallow 
or  (which  is  worse  than  shallow)  will  be  erroneous  ana 
insecure  in  its  foundations,  is  to  say  little  of  such  a 
habit :  it  is  by  reaction  upon  a  man's  faculties,  it  is  by 
the  effects  reflected  upon  his  judging  and  reasoning 
powers,  that  loose  habits  of  reading  tell  eventually. 
And  these  are  durable  effects.  Even  as  respects  the 
minor  purpose  of  information,  better  it  is,  by  a  thou- 
sand-fold, to  have  read  threescore  of  books  (chosen 
judiciously)  with  severe  attention,  than  to  have  raced 
through  the  library  of  the  "V  atican  et  a  newspaper  pace, 
14 


210  STYLE. 

But,  as  respects  the  final  habits  acquired,  habits  of 
thinking  coherently,  and  of  judging  soundly  -  better 
that  a  man  should  have  not  read  one  line  throughout 
his  life,  than  have  travelled  through  the  journals  of 
Eui-ope  by  this  random  process  of  '  reading  short.' 

Yet,  by  this  Parthian  habit  of  aiming  at  full  gallop 
—  of  taking  flying  shots  at  conspicuous  marks,  and, 
like  Parthians  also,  directing  their  chance  arrows  whilst 
retreating,  and  revolting  with  horror  from  si  direct  ap- 
proach to  the  object,  —  thus  it  is,  that  the  young  and 
the  flexible  are  trained  amongst  us  under  the  increasing 
tyranny  of  journalism.  A  large  part  of  the  evil,  there- 
fore, belongs  to  style  ;  for  't  is  this  which  repels  read- 
ers, and  enforces  the  short-hand  process  of  desultory 
reading.  A  large  part  of  the  evil,  therefore,  is  of  a 
nature  to  receive  a  remedy. 

It  is  with  a  view  to  that  practical  part  of  the  exten- 
sive evil,  that  we  have  shaped  our  present  notice  of 
popular  style,  as  made  operative  amongst  ourselves. 
One  single  vice  of  periodic  syntax,  a  vice  unknown  to 
the  literature  of  Greece,  and,  until  Paterculus,  even  of 
Rome,  (although  the  language  of  Rome  was  so  naturally 
adapted  to  that  vice,)  has  with  us  counterbalanced  all 
possible  vices  of  any  other  order.  Simply  by  the  vast 
sphere  of  its  agency  for  evil,  in  the  habits  of  mind 
which  it  produces  and  siipports,  such  a  vice  merits  a 
consideration  which  would  else  be  disproportionate. 
Yet,  at  the  same  time,  it  must  not  be  forge  tten,  that  if 
the  most  operative  of  all  vices,  after  all  it  is  but  one. 
What  are  the  others  ? 

It  is  a  fault,  amongst  many  faults,  of  such  works  as 
we  have  on  this  subject  of  style  —  that  they  collect  the 
list  of  qualities,  good  or  bad,  to  which  composition  ia 


STYLE.  211 

liable,  not  under  any  principle  from  which  they  might 
be  deduced  a  priori,  so  as  to  be  assured  that  all  had 
Deen  enumerated,  but. by  a  tentative  groping,  a  mere 
conjectural  estimate.  The  word  style  has  with  us  a 
twofold  meaning  ;  one  sense,  the  narrow  one,  express- 
ing the  mere  synthesis  onomaton,  the  syntaxis  or  com- 
bination of  words  into  sentences  ;  the  other  of  far 
wider  extent,  and  expressing  all  possible  relations  that 
can  arise  between  thoughts  and  words  —  the  total 
eflfect  of  a  w'riter,  as  derived  from  manner.  Style 
may  be  viewed  as  an  organic  thing  and  as  a  mechanic 
thing.  By  organic,  we  mean  that  which,  being  acted 
upon,  reacts  —  and  which  propagates  the  communi- 
cated power  without  loss.  By  mechanic,  that  which, 
being  impressed  with  motion,  cannot  throw  it  back 
without  loss,  and  therefore  soon  comes  to  an  end. 
The  human  body  is  an  elaborate  system  of  organs  ;  It 
is  sustained  by  organs.  But  the  human  body  is  exer- 
cised as  a  machine,  and,  as  such,  may  be  viewed  in 
the  arts  of  riding,  dancing,  leaping,  &c.,  subject  to 
the  laws  of  motion  and  equilibrium.  Now,  the  use  of 
words  is  an  organic  thing,  in  so  far  as  language  is  con- 
nected with  thoughts,  and  modified  by  thoughts.  It  is 
a  mechanic  thing,  in  so  far  as  words  in  combination 
determine  or  modify  each  other.  The  science  of  style, 
as  an  organ  of  thought,  of  style  in  relation  to  the  ideas 
and  feelings,  might  be  called  the  organology  of  style. 
The  science  of  style,  considered  as  a  machine,  in  which 
words  act  upon  words,  and  through  a  particular  gram- 
mar, might  be  called  the  mechanology  of  style.  It  is 
of  little  importance  by  what  name  these  two  functions 
of  composition  are  expressed.  But  it  is  of  great  im- 
portance not  to  ajnfound  the  fuLctions  ;  that  function 


212  STYLE. 

Dy  wliich  style  maintains  a  commerce  with  thought, 
and  that  by  which  it  chiefly  communicates  with  gram- 
mar and  with  words.  A  pedant  only  will  insist  upon 
the  names  —  but  the  distinction  in  the  ideas,  under 
some  name,  can  be  neglected  only  by  the  man  who  is 
careless  of  logic. 

"We  know  not  how  far  we  may  be  ever  called  upon 
to  proceed  Avith  this  discussion  :  if  it  should  happen 
that  we  were,  an  interesting  field  of  questions  would 
lie  before  us  for  the  first  part,  (the  organology.)  It 
would  lead  us  over  the  ground  trodden  by  the  Greek 
and  Roman  rhetoricians  ;  and  over  those  particular 
questions  which  have  arisen  by  the  contrast  between 
the  circumstances  of  the  ancients  and  our  own  since 
the  origin  of  printing.  Punctuation,"'^  trivial  as  such 
an  innovation  may  seem,  was  the  product  of  typogra- 
phy ;  and  it  is  interesting  to  trace  the  effects  upon 
style  even  of  that  one  slight  addition  to  the  resources 
of  logic.  Previously,  a  man  was  driven  to  depend  for 
his  security  against  misunderstanding  upon  the  pure 
virtue  of  his  syntax.  Miscollocation  or  dislocation  of 
related  words  disturbed  the  whole  sense  :  its  least 
effect  was  to  give  no  sense  ;  often  it  gave  a  danger- 
ous sense.  Now,  punctuation  was  an  artificial  ma- 
chinery for  maintaining  the  integrity  of  the  sense 
against  all  mistakes  of  the  writer  ;  and,  as  one  con- 
sequence, it  withdrew  the  energy  of  men's  anxieties 
from  the  natural  machinery,  which  lay  in  just  and 
careful  arrangement.  Another  and  still  greater  ma- 
chinery of  art  for  the  purpose  of  maintaining  the 
sense,  and  with  the  effect  of  relaxing  the  care  of  the 
wrriter,  lay  in  the  exquisitely  artificial  structure  of  tlie 
Latin    language,   which,   by   means   of    its    terminal 


STYLE.  213 

forms,  indicated  the    arrangement,   and   referred   the 
proper   predicate   to   the  proper   subject,  spite   of  all 
that  affectation  or  negligence  could  do  to  disturb   the 
series   of  the   logic   or   the   succession  of  the  syntax. 
Greek,  of  course,   had  the   same   advantage   in  kind, 
b«t  not  in  degree  ;  and  thence  rose  some  differences 
which  have  escaped  all  notice  of  rhetoricians.     Here 
also    would   properly    arise    the    question    started    by 
Charles  Fox,  (but  probably  due  originally  to  the  con- 
versation of  some  far  subtler  frieod,  such  as  Edmund 
Burke,)  how  far   the  practice  of  foot-notes  —  a  prac- 
tice purely  modern  in  its  form  —  is  reconcilable  with 
the  laws  of  just  composition  ;  and  whether  in  virtue, 
though  not  in  form,  such  foot-notes  did  not  exist  for 
the  ancients,  by  an  evasion  we  could  point  out.     The 
question  is  clearly  one  which  grows  out  of  style  in  its 
relations   to  thought  —  how  far,  viz.,  such  an  excres- 
cence as  a  note  ai-gues  that  the  sentence  to  which  it  is 
attached  has  not  received  the  benefit  of  a  full  devel- 
opment   for   the    conception    involved ;    whether   if 
thrown  into  the  furnace  again  and  re-melted,  it  might 
not  be   so   recast   as  to  absorb  the  redundancy  which 
had   previously  flowed   over   into  a  note.     Under   this 
head  would  fall  not  only  all  the  differential  questions 
of  style  and  composition  between  us  and  the  ancients, 
but  also   the   questions  of  merit  as  fairly  distributed 
amongst  the  moderns  compared  with  each  other.     The 
French,  as  we   recently  insisted,  undoubtedly  nossess 
one  vast  advantage  over  all  other   nations  in  the  good 
taste  which   governs   the    arrangement  of    their    sen- 
tences ;    in    the    simplicity    (a    strange    pretension    to 
Hake  for  anything   French)  o^  the   modulation  under 
Thich    their    thoughts    flow ;    in   the    absence    of    all 


214  STYLE. 

cumbrous  involution,  and  in  the  quick  succession  1 
their  periods.  In  reality  this  invaluable  merit  tends 
to  an  excess  ;  and  the  style  coupe  as  opposed  to  the 
style  soutenu,  flippancy  opposed  to  gravity,  the  sub- 
sultory  to  the  continuous,  these  are  the  two  frequent 
extremities  to  which  the  French  manner  betrays  men. 
Better,  however,  to  be  flippant,  than,  by  a  revolting 
form  of  tumor  and  perplexity,  to  lead  men  into  habits 
cf  intellect  such  as  result  from  the  modern  vice  of 
English  style.  Still,  with  all  its  practical  value,  it  is 
evident  that  the  intellectual  merits  of  the  French  style 
are  but  small.  They  are  chiefly  negative,  in  the  first 
place  ;  and,  secondly,  founded  in  the  accident  of  their 
colloquial  necessities.  The  law  of  conversation  has 
prescribed  the  model  of  their  sentences  ;  and  in  that 
law  there  is  quite  as  much  of  self-interest  at  work  as 
of  respect  for  equity.  Hanc  veniam  petimusque  da- 
tnusque  vicissim.  Give  and  take  is  the  rule,  and  he 
who  expects  to  be  heard  must  condescend  to  listen ; 
which  necessity,  for  both  parties,  binds  over  both  to 
be  brief.  Brevity  so  won  could  at  any  rate  have 
little  merit ;  and  it  is  certain  that,  for  profound  think- 
ing, it  must  sometimes  be  a  hinderance.  In  order  to 
be  brief,  a  man  must  take  a  short  sweep  of  view  :  his 
range  of  thought  cannot  be  extensive  ;  and  such  a 
rub),  applied  to  a  general  method  of  thinking,  is  fitted 
rather  to  aphorism?  and  maxims  as  upon  a  known 
subject,  than  to  any  process  of  investigation  as  upon 
'\  subject  yet  to  be  fathomed.  Advancing  stUl  further 
into  the  examination  of  style  as  the  organ  of  thinking, 
we  should  find  occasion  to  see  the  prodigious  defects 
9f  the  French  in  all  the  higher  qualities  of  prose 
lomposition.     One  advantage,  for  a  practical  puroose 


RTYIiE. 


21f 


of  life,  is  sadly  counterbalanced  by  numerous   faults, 
many  of  which  are  faults  of  stamina,  lying  not  in  anj 
corrigible    defects,    but   in    such   as  imply  penury   of 
thinking,     from    radical    inaptitude    in   the    thinking 
faculty  °to  connect  itself  with   the   feeling,   and  with 
the   creative   faculty   of  the  imagination.     There  are 
many  other  researches  belonging  to  this  subtlest  of 
Bubj'ects,  affecting  both  the  logic  and  the  ornaments 
of  style,  which  would  fall  under  the  head  of  organ- 
ology.    'But  for  instant  practical  use,  though  far  less 
difficult  for  investigation,  yet,  for  that  reason,  far  more 
tangible  and  appreciable,  would  be  all  the  suggestions 
proper   to   the   other   head  of  mechanology.     Half  a 
dozen  rules  for  evading  the  most  frequently  recurring 
forms  of  awkwardness,  of  obscurity,  of  misproportion, 
and   of  double  meaning,  would  do  more  to  assist  a 
writer  in  practice,  laid  under  some  necessity  of  hurry, 
than  volumes    of  general  disquisition.     It   makes  us 
blush  to  add,   that  even   grammar   is    so   little   of  a 
perfect  attainment  amongst  us,  that  with  two  or  three 
exceptions,  (one  being  Shakspeare,  whom  some  affect 
to  consider  as  belonging  to  a  semi-barbarous  age,)  we 
have  never  seen  the  writer,  through  a  circuit  of  pro- 
digious reading,  who  has  not  sometimes  violated  the 
accidence  or  the  syntax  of  English  grammar. 

Whatever  becomes  of  our  own  possible  specula- 
^ons  we  shaU  conclude  with  insisting  on  the  gromng 
necessity  of  style  as  a  practical  interest  of  daily  life. 
Upon  subjects  of  public  concern,  and  in  proportion  to 
that  concern,  there  will  always  be  a  suitable  (and  as 
letters  extend,  a  growing)  competition.  Other  thmgs 
.eing  equal,  or  appearing  to  be  equal,  the  determining 
principle  for  the  public  choice  will  lie  in  the  style. 


216  STYLE. 

Of  a  German  book,  other-wise  entitled  to  respect,  it 
was  said  —  er  Idsst  sich  nicht  lesen,  it  does  not  permit 
itself  to  be  read:  such,  and  so  repulsive  was  the  style. 
Among  ourselves,  this  has  long  been  true  of  news- 
papers :  they  do  not  suffer  themselves  to  be  read  in 
extenso,  and  they  are  read  short  —  with  what  iuj  ury  to 
the  mind  may  be  guessed.  The  same  style  of  read- 
ing, once  largely  practised,  is  applied  universally. 
To  this  special  evil  an  improvement  of  style  would 
apply  a  special  redress.  The  same  improvement  is 
otherwise  clamorously  called  for  by  each  man's  inter- 
est of  competition.  Public  luxury,  which  is  gradually 
consulted  by  everything  else,  must  at  length  be  con- 
sulted in  style. 


PART    II. 

It  is  a  natural  resource,  that  whatsoever  we  find  it 
difficult  to  investigate  as  a  result,  we  endeavor  to 
follow  as  a  growth  ;  failing  analytically  to  probe  its 
nature,  historically  we  seek  relief  to  our  perplexities 
by  tracing  its  origin.  Not  able  to  assign  the  elements 
of  its  theory,  we  endeavor  to  detect  them  in  the  stages 
of  its  development.  Thus,  for  instance,  when  any 
feudal  institution  (be  it  Gothic,  Norman,  or  Anglo- 
Saxon)  eludes  our  deciphering  faculty,  from  the  im- 
perfect records  of  its  use  and  operation,  then  we 
endeavor  conjecturally  to  amend  our  knowledge,  by 
watching  the  circumstances  in  which  that  institution 
arose  ;  and  from  the  necessities  of  the  age,  as  indi- 
cated by  facts  which  have  survived,  we  are  sometimes 
%ble  to  trace,  through  all  their  corresponding  stages  o/ 


BTTLB.  217 

^owth,  the  natural  succession  of  arrangements  which 
Buch  necessities  would  be  likely  tc  prescribe. 

This  mode  of  oblique  research,  where  a  more  direct 
one  is  denied,  we  find  to  be  the  only  one  in  our  power. 
A.nd,  -with  respect  to  the  liberal  arts,  it  is  even  more 
true  than  with  respect  to  laws  or  institutions ;  because 
remote  ages,  widely  separated,  differ  much  more  in 
their  pleasiires  than  they  can  ever  do  in  their  social 
necessities.  To  make  property  safe  and  life  sacred 
—  that  is  everywhere  a  primary  purpose  of  law.  But 
the  intellectual  amusements  of  men  are  so  different, 
that  the  very  purposes  and  elementary  functions  of 
these  amusements  are  different.  They  point  to  dif- 
ferent ends  as  well  as  different  means.  The  drama, 
for  instance,  in  Greece,  connects  itself  with  religion ; 
in  other  ages,  religion  is  the  power  most  in  resistance 
to  the  drama.  Hence,  and  because  the  elder  and  ruder 
ages  are  most  favorable  to  a  ceremonial  and  mytholog- 
ical religion,  we  find  the  tragedy  of  Greece  defunct 
before  the  literary  age  arose.  Aristotle's  era  may  be 
taken  as  the  earliest  era  of  refinement  and  literary  de- 
velopment. But  Aristotle  wrote  his  Essay  on  the 
Greek  Tragedy  just  a  century  after  the  chefs  d'ceuvre 
jf  that  tragedy  had  been  published. 

If,  therefore,  it  is  sometimes  requisite  for  the  proper 
explanation  even  of  a  law  or  legal  usage,  that  we 
should  go  to  its  history,  not  looking  for  a  sufiicienl 
key  to  its  meaning  in  the  mere  analogies  of  our  own 
social  necessities,  much  more  will  that  be  requisite  in 
explaining  an  art  or  a  mode  of  intellectual  pleasure. 
Why  it  was  that  the  ancients  had  no  landscape  paint- 
ng,  is  a  question  deep  almost  as  tne  mystery  of  life,  and 
aarder  of  solution  than  all  the  problems  of  jurispru- 


218  STYLE. 

dence  comMned.  What  causes  moulded  the  tragedy 
of  the  ancients  could  hardly  ^e  guessed,  if  we  did  not 
happen  to  know  its  history  and  mythologlc  origin 
And  with  respect  to  what  is  called  Style,  not  so  much 
as  a  sketch  —  as  an  outline  —  as  a  hint  could  bo 
furnished  towards  the  earliest  speculations  upon  this 
subject,  if  we  should  overlook  the  historical  facts  con- 
nected with  its  earliest  development. 

What  was  it  that  first  produced  into  this  world  that 
celebrated  thing  called  Prose  ?  It  was  the  bar,  it  was 
the  hustings,  it  was  the  Bema  (to  ^ij^io).  What  Gibbon 
and  most  historians  of  the  Mussulmans  have  rather 
absurdly  called  the  pulpit  of  the  Caliphs,  should  rather 
be  called  the  rostrum,  the  Roman  military  suggestus, 
or  Athenian  hema.  The  fierce  and  generally  illiterate 
Mahometan  harangued  his  troops  ;  preach  he  could 
not;  he  had  no  subject  for  preaching.^*'  Now  this 
function  of  man,  in  almost  all  states  of  society,  the 
function  of  public  haranguing  was  for  the  Pagan  man, 
who  had  no  printing-press,  more  of  a  mere  necessity, 
through  every  mode  of  public  life,  than  it  is  for  the 
modern  man  of  Christian  light :  for  as  to  the  modern 
man  of  Mahometan  twilight,  his  perfect  bigotry  denies 
him  this  characteristic  resource  of  Christian  energies. 
Tust  four  centuries  have  we  of  the  Cross  propagated 
our  light  by  this  memorable  invention ;  just  four  cen- 
turies have  the  slaves  of  the  Crescent  clung  to  their 
darkness  by  rejecting  it.  Christianity  signs  her  name ; 
[slamism  makes  her  mark.  And  the  great  doctors  of 
the  Mussulmans,  take  their  stand  precisely  where  Jack 
Cade  took  his  a  few  years  after  printing  had  been 
discovered.  Jack  and  they  both  make  it  felony  to  be 
Viund  with  a  spelling-book,  and  sorcery  to  deal  with 
syntax. 


STTLE. 


219 


Yet  with  these  differences,  all  of  us  alike,  Pagan, 
Mussulman,  Christian,  have  practised  the  ai-ts  of  public 
speaking  as  the  most  indispensable  resource  of  public 
administration  and  of  private  intrigue.  Whether  the 
purpose  were  to  pursue  the  interests  of  legislation,  or 
to  conduct  the  business  of  jurisprudence,  or  to  bring 
the  merits  of  great  citizens  pathethically  before  their 
countrymen  ;  or  (if  the  state  were  democratic  enough) 
oftentimes  to  explain  the  conduct  of  the  executive 
government— oftentimes,  also,  to  prosecute  a  scheme 
of  personal  ambition ;  whether  the  audience  were  a 
mob,  a  senate,  a  judicial  tribunal,  or  an  army ;  equaUy 
(though  not  in  equal  degrees;  for  the  Pagan  of  twenty- 
five  hundred  years  back,  and  for  us  moderns,  the 
arts  of  public  speaking,  and  consequently  of  prose  a? 
opposed  to  metrical  composition,  have  been  the  capital 
engine  —  the  one  great  intellectual  machine  —  of  civil 

life. 

This,  to  some  people,  may  seem  a  matter  of  course ; 

'  would  you  have  men  speak  in  rhyme  ?  '     We  answer, 

that  when  society  comes  into  a  state  of  refinement,  the 

total  uses  of  language  are  developed  in  common  with 

other  arts ;  but  originally,  and  whilst  man  was  in  his 

primitive  condition  of  simplicity,  it  must  have  seemed 

an  unnatural,  nay,  an  absurd,  thing  to  speak  in  prose. 

For  in  those  elder  days,  the  sole  justifying  or  exciting 

cases  for  a  public  harangue,  would  be  cases  connected 

with  impassioned  motives.     Rare   they  would  be,   as 

they  had  need  to  be,  where  both  the  '  hon.  gentleman' 

who  moves,  and  Hs  'hon.  friend'  who  seconds,  are 

-equired   to    speak  in   Trimeter  Iambic.     Hence  the 

Viece«sity  that  the  oracles  should  be  delivered  in  verse. 

Who  ever  heard  of  a  prose  oracle  ?     And  hence,  as 


820  STYLE. 

Grecian  taste  expanded,  the  disagreeable  criticisms 
whispered  about  in  Athens  as  to  the  coai-se  quality  of 
the  verses  that  proceeded  from  Delphi.  It  was  like 
bad  Latin  from  Oxford.  Apollo  himself,  to  turn  out 
of  his  own  temple,  in  the  very  age  of  Sophocles, 
such  Birmingham  hexameters  as  sometimes  astonished 
Greece,  was  like  our  English  court  keeping  a  Stephen 
Duck,  the  thresher,  for  the  national  poet-laureate,  at  a 
time  when  Pope  was  fixing  an  era  in  the  literature. 
Metre  fell  to  a  discount  in  such  learned  times.  But, 
in  itself,  metre  must  always  have  been  the  earliest 
vehicle  for  public  enunciations  of  truth  among  men, 
for  these  obvious  reasons:  —  1.  That,  if  metre  rises 
above  the  standard  of  ordinary  household  life,  so  must 
any  truth  of  importance  and  singularity  enough  to 
challenge  a  public  utterance.  2.  That,  because  re- 
ligious communications  will  always  have  taken  a 
metrical  form,  by  a  natural  association  of  feeling, 
whatsoever  is  invested  with  a  privileged  character  will 
seek  something  of  religious  sanction,  by  assuming 
the  same  external  shape  ;  and  3.  That  expressions,  or 
emphatic  verbal  forms,  which  are  naturally  courted  for 
the  sake  of  pointed  effect,  receive  a  justification  from 
metre,  as  being  already  a  departure  from  common 
usage  to  begin  with,  whereas,  in  plain  prose,  they 
would  appear  so  many  afi'ectations.  Metre  is  natu- 
rally and  necessarily  adopted  in  cases  of  impassioned 
themes,  for  the  very  obvious  reason,  that  rhythmus  is 
both  a  cause  of  impassioned  feeling,  an  ally  of  such 
feeling,  and  a  natural  efl'ect  of  it ;  but  upon  other 
subjects  not  impassioned,  metre  is  also  a  subtle  ally, 
because  it  serves  to  introduce,  and  to  reconcile  with 
our  sense  of  propriety,  various  arts  of  condensat'on. 


STYLE.  221 

antithesis,  and  other  rhetorical  effects,  which,  without 
the  metre  (as  a  key  for  harmonizing  them)  would  strike 
the  feelings  as  unnatural,  or  as  full  of  affectation. 
Interrogations,  for  example,  passionate  ejaculations, 
&c.,  seem  no  more  than  natural,  when  metre  (acting 
as  a  key)  has  attuned  and  prepared  the  mind  for  such 
effects.  The  metre  raises  the  tone  of  coloring,  so  as 
to  introduce  richer  tints,  without  shocking  or  harshly 
jarring  upon  the  presiding  key,  when  without  this 
semi-conscious  pitching  of  the  expectations,  the  sensi- 
bility would  have  been  revolted.  Hence,  for  the  very 
earliest  stages  of  society,  it  will  be  mere  nature  that 
prompts  men  to  metre  :  it  is  a  mode  of  inspiration  —  it 
is  a  promise  of  something  preternatural ;  and  less  than 
preternatural  cannot  be  any  possible  emergency  that 
should  call  for  a  public  address.  Only  great  truths 
could  require  a  man  to  come  forward  as  a  spokesman : 
he  is  then  a  sort  of  interpreter  between  God  and  man, 
his  creature. 

At  first,  therefore,  it  is  mere  nature  which  prompts 
metre.  Afterwards,  as  truth  begins  to  enlarge  itself — 
as  truth  loses  something  of  its  sanctity  by  descending 
amongst  human  details  —  that  mode  of  exalting  it,  and 
of  courting  attention,  is  dictated  by  artifice,  which 
originally  was  a  mere  necessity  of  nature  raised  above 
herself.  For  these  reasons,  it  is  certain  that  men, 
challenging  high  authentic  character,  will  continue  to 
epeak  by  metre  for  many  generations  after  it  has 
ceased  to  be  a  mere  voice  of  habitual  impulse.  What- 
Boever  claims  an  oracular  authority,  will  take  the  or- 
iinary  external  form  of  an  oracle.  And  after  it  has 
ceased  to  be  a  badge  of  inspiration,  metre  will  be  re- 
gained as  a  badge  of  professional  distinction  ;  —  Py- 


222  STYLE. 

thagoras,  for  instance,  within  five  centuries  of  Christ, 
Thales  or  Theognis,  will  adopt  metre  out  of  a  second- 
ary prudence ;  Orpheus  and  the  elder  Sibyl,  out  of  an 
original  necessity. 

Those  people  are,  therefore,  mistaken  who  imagine 
that  prose  is  either  a  natural  or  a  possible  form  of 
composition  in  early  states  of  society.  It  is  such  truth 
only  as  ascends  from  the  earth,  not  such  as  descends 
from  heaven,  which  can  ever  assume  an  unmetrical 
form.  Now,  in  the  earliest  states  of  society,  all  truth 
that  has  any  interest  or  importance  for  man  will  con- 
nect itself  with  heaven.  If  it  does  not  originally 
come  forward  in  that  sacred  character,  if  it  does  not 
borrow  its  importance  from  its  sanctity ;  then,  by  an 
inverse  order,  it  will  borrow  a  sanctity  from  its  impor- 
tance. Even  agricultural  truth,  even  the  homeliest 
truths  of  rural  industry,  brought  into  connection  with 
religious  inspiration,  will  be  exalted  (like  the  common 
culinary  utensils  in  the  great  vision  of  the  Jewish 
prophet)  and  transfigured  into  vessels  of  glorious  con- 
secration. All  things  in  this  early  stage  of  social  man 
are  meant  mysteriously,  have  allegoric  values  ;  and 
week-day  man  moves  amongst  glorified  objects.  So 
that  if  any  doctrine,  principle,  or  system  of  truth, 
should  call  for  communication  at  all,  infallibly  the  coiw- 
munication  will  take  the  tone  of  a  revelation ;  and  the 
holiness  of  a  revelation  will  express  itself  in  the  most 
impassioned  form  —  perhaps  with  accompaniments  of 
inusic,  but  certainly  with  metre. 

Prose,  therefore,  strange  as  it  may  seem  to  say  so, 
was  something  of  a  discovery.  If  not  great  invention, 
at  least  great  courage  would  be  required  for  the  man 
who  should  first  swim  without  the  bladders  of  metre 


STYLE.  223 

It  is  all  very  easy  talking,  when  you  and  your  ances- 
tors, for  fifty  generations  back,  have  talked  prose.  But 
that  man  naust  have  had  triplex  ces  about  his  prcecor- 
dia,  who  first  dared  to  come  forward  with  pure  prose 
to  a  people  who  had  never  heard  anything  but  metre. 
It  was  like  the  case  of  the  first  physician  who  dared  to 
lay  aside  the  ample  wig  and  gold-headed  cane.  All  the 
Jovian  terrors  of  his  professional  being  laid  aside,  he 
was  thrown  upon  his  mere  natural  resources  of  skill 
and  o-ood  sense.  "Who  was  the  first  lion-hearted  man 
that  ventured  to  make  sail  in  this  frail  boat  of  prose  ? 
We  believe  the  man's  name  is  reputed  to  have  been 
Pherecydes.  But  as  nothing  is  less  worth  remember- 
ing than  the  mere  hollow  shell  of  a  name,  where  all 
the  pulp  and  the  kernel  is  gone,  we  shall  presume 
Herodotus  to  have  been  the  first  respectable  artist  in 
prose.  And,  what  was  this  worthy  man's  view  of 
prose  ?  From  the  way  in  which  he  connected  his 
several  books  or  '  fyttes '  with  the  names  of  the  muses, 
and  from  the  romantic  style  of  his  narratives,  as  well  as 
from  his  using  a  dialect  which  had  certainly  become  a 
poetic  dialect,  in  literary  Greece,  it  is  pretty  clear  that 
llerodotus  stood,  and  meant  to  stand,  on  that  isthmus 
oetween  the  regions  of  poetry  and  blank  unimpassioned 
prose,  which  in  modern  literature  is  occupied  by  such 
works  as  Mort  d' Arthur.  In  Thucydides,  we  scf  the 
fcrst  exhibition  of  stern  philosophic  prose.  And,  con- 
eidering  the  very  brief  interval  between  the  two  writers, 
who  stand  related  to  each  other,  in  point  of  time,  pretty 
much  as  Dryden  and  Pope,  it  is  quite  impossible  to 
look  for  the  solution  of  their  characteristic  diff"erence8 
in  the  mere  graduations  of  social  development.  Peri- 
cles, as  a  young  man,  would  most  certainly  ask  Hero- 


224  STYLB. 

dotus  to  dinner,  if  business  or  curiosity  ever  dre^w 
that  amiable  writer  to  Athens.  As  an  elderly  man, 
Pericles  must  often  have  seen  Thucydides  at  his  le- 
vees ;  although  by  that  time  the  sacrifice  of  his  '  social 
pleasure  ill  exchanged  for  power,'  may  have  abridged 
his  opportunity  of  giving  '  feeds '  to  literary  men. 
But  will  anybody  believe  that  the  mere  advance  of 
social  refinement,  within  the  narrow  period  of  one 
man's  public  life,  could  bring  about  so  marvellous  a 
change,  as  that  the  friend  of  his  youth  should  natu- 
radly  write  very  much  in  the  spirit  of  Sir  John  Man- 
deville,  and  the  friend  of  his  old  age,  like  Machiavel 
or  Gibbon  ?  No,  no  ;  the  diff'erence  between  these 
two  writers  does  not  refiect  the  different  aspects  of 
literary  Greece  at  two  eras  so  slightly  removed,  too 
great  to  be  measured  by  that  scale  ;  as  though  those 
of  the  picturesque  Herodotus  were  a  splendid  semi- 
barbarous  generation,  those  of  the  meditative  Thucy- 
dides, speculative,  political,  experimental,  —  but  we 
must  look  to  subjective  diff'erences  of  taste  and  tem- 
perament in  the  men.  The  men,  by  nature,  and  by 
powerful  determination  of  original  sensibility,  belong 
to  diff'erent  orders  of  intellect.  Herodotus  was  the 
Froissart  of  antiquity.  He  was  the  man  that  should 
have  lived  to  record  the  Crusades.  Thucydides, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  obviously  the  Tacitus  of 
Greece,  who  (had  he  been  privileged  to  benefit  by 
some  metempsychosis  dropping  him  into  congenial 
scenes  of  modern  history)  would  have  made  his  elec- 
tion for  the  Avars  of  the  French  League,  or  for  our  Par- 
liamentary war,  or  for  the  colossal  conflicts  which  grew 
i)ut  of  the  French  Revolution.  The  one  was  the  son 
of  nature,  fascinated  by  the  mighty  powers  of  chance 


STYLE.  225 

or  of  tragic  destiny,  as  they  are  sten  in  elder  times 
moulding  the  form  of  empires,  or  training  the  currents 
of  revolutions.  The  other  was  the  son  of  political  spec- 
ulation, delighting  to  trace  the  darker  agencies  which 
brood  in  the  mind  of  man  —  the  subtle  motives,  the 
combinations,  the  plots  which  gather  in  the  brain  of 
'  dark  viziers,'  when  entrusted  with  the  fate  of  millions, 
and  the  nation-wielding  tempests  which  move  at  the 
bidding  of  the  orator. 

But  these  subjective  differences  were  not  all ;  they 
led  to  objective  differences,  by  determining  each  wri- 
ter's mind  to  a  separate  object.  Does  any  man  fancy 
that  these  two  writers  imagined,  each  for  himself,  the 
same  audience  ?  Or  again,  that  each  represented  his 
own  audience  as  addressed  from  the  same  station  ? 
The  earlier  of  the  two,  fidl  of  those  qualities  which 
fit  a  man  for  producing  an  effect  as  an  artist,  mani- 
festly comes  forward  in  a  theatrical  character,  and 
addresses  his  audience  from  a  theatrical  station.  Is  it 
readers  whom  he  courts  ?  No,  but  auditors.  Is  it  the 
literary  body  whom  he  addresses  —  a  small  body  every- 
where ?  No,  but  the  public  without  limitation.  Pub- 
lic !  but  what  public?  Not  the  public  of  Lacedsemon, 
drunk  with  the  gloomy  insolence  of  self-conceit  —  not 
the  public  of  Athens,  amiably  vain,  courteous,  affable, 
refined  :  No,  it  is  the  public  of  universal  Hellas,  an 
august  congress  representing  the  total  civilization  of 
the  earth :  so  that  of  any  man  not  known  at  Olympia, 
orince,  emperor,  whatever  he  might  call  himself,  if  he 
were  not  present  in  person  or  by  proxy,  you  might 
warrantably  affirm  that  he  was  homo  ignordbilis  —  a 
f>er8on  of  whose  existence  nobody  was  bound  to  take 
tiotice ;  a  man  to  be  ignored  by  a  grand  jury.  This 
15 


226  STTXB. 

representative  champ  de  Mai,  Herodotus  addressed. 
And  in  what  character  did  he  address  it  ?  What  char- 
acter did  he  ascribe  to  the  audience  ?  What  character 
did  he  assume  to  himself  ?  Them  he  addressed  some- 
times in  their  general  character  of  human  beings  ;  but 
still  having  a  common  interest  in  a  central  net- work  of 
civilization,  investing  a  certain  ring-fence,  beginning 
in  Sicily  and  Carthage,  whence  it  ran  round  through 
Lybia,  Egypt,  Syria,  Persia,  the  Ionian  belt  or  zone, 
and  terminating  in  the  majestic  region  of  Men  —  the 
home  of  liberty  —  the  Pharos  of  truth  and  intellectual 
power  —  the  very  region  in  which  they  were  all  at  that 
moment  assembled.  There  was  such  a  collective  body 
dimly  recognized  at  times  by  the  ancients,  as  corres- 
ponds to  our  modern  Christendom,  and  having  some 
unity  of  possible  interest  by  comparison  with  the  un- 
known regions  of  Scythias,  Indias,  and  Ethiopias, 
lying  in  a  far  wider  circle  beyond  ;  regions  that,  from 
their  very  obscurity,  and  from  the  utter  darkness  of 
their  exterior  relations,  must  at  times  have  been  looked 
to  with  eyes  of  anxiety  —  as  permanently  harboring 
that  possible  deluge  of  savage  eruption  which,  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty  years  after,  did  actually  swallow 
up  the  Grecian  colony  of  Bactria,  (or  Bokhara,)  as 
founded  by  Alexander  ;  swallowed  it  so  suddenly  and 
80  effectually,  that  merely  the  blank  fact  of  its  tragical 
catastrophe  has  reached  posterity.  It  was  surprised 
probably  in  one  night,  like  Pompeii  by  Vesuvius  ;  or, 
like  the  planet  itself  by  Noah's  flood.  Or  more  nearly 
its  fate  resembled  those  starry  bodies  which  have  been 
Been,  traced,  recorded,  fixed  in  longitude  and  latitude 
"or  generations  ;  and  then  suddenly  are  observed  to 
je  missing  by  some  of  our  wandering  telescopes  tha/ 


STYLE.  227 

keep  watch  and  ward  over  the  starry  heavens.  The 
agonies  of  a  perishing  world  have  been  going  on  ;  but 
all  is  bright  and  silent  in  the  heavenly  host.  Infinite 
space  has  swallowed  up  the  infinite  agonies.  Perhaps 
the  only  record  of  Bactria  was  the  sullen  report  of 
some  courier  from  Susa,  who  would  come  back  with 
his  letters  undelivered ;  simply  reporting  that  on  reach- 
ing such  a  ferry  on  some  nameless  river,  or  such  an 
outpost  upon  a  heath,  he  found  it  in  possession  of  a 
fierce  unknown  race  —  the  ancestors  of  future  Affghans 
or  Tartars. 

Such  a  catastrophe,  as  menacing  by  possibility  the 
whole  of  civilization,  and  under  that  hypothetical  peril 
as  giving  even  to  Greece  herself  an  interest  in  the  sta- 
bility even  of  Persia  her  great  enemy,  a  great  resist- 
ing mass  interjacent  between  Greece  and  the  unknown 
enemies  to  the  far  north-east,  or  east,  could  not  but 
have  mixed  occasionally  with  Greek  anticipations  for 
the  future  ;  and  in  a  degree  quite  inappreciable  by  ue 
who  know  the  geographical  limits  of  Asia.     To  the 
ancients,  these  were  by  possibility,  in  a  strict  sense, 
infinite.     The  terror  from  the  unknown  Scythians  of 
the  world  was  certainly  vague  and  indistinct ;  but,  if 
that  disarmed  the  terror  or  broke  its  sting,  assuredly 
the  very  same  cause  would  keep  it  alive  :    for  the  peril 
ATOuld  often  swell  upon  the  eye,  merely  from  its  un- 
certain limits.     Far  oftener,  however,  those  glorious 
certainties    revolved    upon    the    Grecian    imagination 
which  presented  Persia  in  the  character  of  her  enemy, 
than   those  remote  possibilities  which  might  connect 
her   as  a  common  friend  against  some  horrid  enemy 
from  the  infinite  deserts  of  Asia.     In  this  character  it 
vaa  that  Herodotus  at  times  addressed  the  assembled 


228 


STYLE. 


Greece,  at  whose  bar  lie  stood.  That  the  intensity  of 
this  patriotic  idea  intermitted  at  times  ;  that  it  was  suf- 
fered to  slumber  through  entire  books ;  this  was  but  an 
artist's  management  which  caused  it  to  swell  upon 
the  ear  all  the  more  sonorously,  more  clamorously, 
more  terrifically,  when  the  lungs  of  the  organ  filled 
once  more  with  breath,  when  the  trumpet  stop  was 
opened,  and  the  '  foudroyant '  style  of  the  organist 
commenced  the  hailstone  chorus  from  Marathon.  Here 
came  out  the  character  in  which  Herodotus  appeared. 
The  Iliad  had  taken  Greece  as  she  was  during  the 
building  of  the  first  temple  at  Jerusalem  —  in  the 
era  of  David  and  Solomon  —  a  thousand  years  before 
Christ.  The  eagle's  plume  in  her  cap  at  that  era 
was  derived  from  Asia.  It  was  the  Troad,  it  was 
Asia  that  in  those  days  constituted  the  great  enemy  of 
Greece.  Greece  universal  had  been  confederated 
against  the  Asia  of  that  day,  and,  after  an  Iliad  of 
woes,  had  triumphed.  But  now  another  era  of  fiv0 
hundred  years  has  passed  since  Troy.  Again  there 
has  been  an  universal  war  raging  between  Greece  and 
a  great  foreign  potentate.  Again  this  enemy  of  Greece 
is  called  Asia.  But  what  Asia  ?  The  Asia  of  the  Iliad 
was  a  petty  maritime  Asia.  But  Asia  now  means  Per- 
sia; and  Persia,  taken  in  combination  with  its  depend- 
ences of  Syria  and  Egypt,  means  the  world,  v  oixov^tvri. 
The  frontier  line  of  the  Persian  empire  '  marched  '  or 
confined  with  the  Grecian  ;  but  now  so  vast  was  the 
revolution  effected  by  Cyrus,  that,  had  not  the  Persians 
been  withheld  by  their  dismal  bigotry  from  cultivating 
maritime  facilities,  the  Greeks  must  have  sunk  under 
the  enormous  power  now  brought  to  bear  upon  them, 
A-t  one  blow  the  whole  territory  of  what  is  now  Turkey 


STYLE.  229 

in  Asia,  viz.  the  whole  of  Anatolia  and  of  Armenia, 
had  been  extinguished  as  a  neutral  and  interjacent 
force  for  Greece.  At  one  blow,  by  the  battle  of 
Thymbra,  the  Persian  armies  had  been  brought  nearer 
by  much  more  than  a  thousand  miles  to  the  gates  of 
Greece. 

That  danger  it  is  necessary  to  conceive,  in  order  to 
to  conceive  that  subsequent  triumph.  Herodotus  — 
whose  family  and  nearest  generation  of  predecessors 
must  have  trembled  after  the  thoughtless  insult  offered 
to  Sardis,  under  the  expectation  of  the  vast  revenge 
prepared  by  the  great  king  —  must  have  had  his  young 
imagination  filled  and  dilated  with  the  enormous  dis- 
play of  Oriental  power,  and  been  thus  prepared  to 
understand  the  terrific  collisions  of  the  Persian  forces 
with  those  of  Greece.  He  had  heard  in  his  travels 
how  the  glorious  result  was  appreciated  in  foreign 
lands.  He  came  back  to  Greece  with  a  twofold  freight 
of  treasures.  He  had  two  messages  for  his  country. 
One  was  —  a  report  of  all  that  was  wonderful  in 
foreign  lands  ;  all  that  was  interesting  from  its  novelty 
or  its  vast  antiquity  ;  all  that  was  regarded  by  the 
natives  for  its  sanctity,  or  by  foreigners  with  amaze- 
ment, as  a  measure  of  colossal  power  in  mechanics. 
And  these  foreign  lands,  we  must  remember,  consti- 
tuted the  total  world  to  a  Greek.  Rome  was  yet  in 
her  infant  days,  unheard  of  beyond  Italy.  Egypt  and 
the  other  dependencies  of  Persia  composed  the  total 
map  south  of  Greece.  Greece,  with  the  Mediterra- 
nean islands,  and  the  eastern  side  of  the  Adriatic,  to- 
gether with  Macedon  and  Thrace,  made  up  the  world 
of  Europe.  Asia,  which  had  not  yet  received  the  nar- 
xow  limitation  imposed  upon  that  word  by  Rome,  was 


280  STYLE. 

co-extensive  with  Persia ;  and  it  might  be  divided  into 
Asia  crs-Tigritana,  and  Asia  frans-Tigritana  ;  the 
Euxine  and  the  Caspian  were  the  boundaries  to  the 
north ;  and  to  one  advancing  further,  the  Oxus  was  the 
northern  boundary,  and  the  Indus  the  eastern.  The 
Punjab,  as  far  as  the  river  Sutlege,  that  is,  up  to  our 
present  British  cantonments  at  Ludiana,  was  indis- 
tinctly supposed  to  be  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Great  King.  Probably  he  held  the  whole  intervening 
territory  of  the  late  Runjeet  Singh,  as  now  possessed 
by  the  Sikhs.  And  beyond  these  limits  all  was  a  mere 
path  of  ideal  splendor,  or  a  dull  repetition  of  monoto- 
nous barbarism. 

The  report  which  personal  travels  enabled  Herodotus 
to  make  of  this  extensive  region,  composing  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  total  map  of  the  terraqueous 
globe  as  it  was  then  supposed  to  exist,  (all  the  rest 
being  a  mere  Nova  Zembla  in  their  eyes,)  was  one  of 
two  revelations  which  the  great  traveller  had  to  lay  at 
the  feet  of  Greece.  The  other  was  a  connected  nar- 
rative of  their  great  struggle  with  the  King  of  Persia. 
The  earth  bisected  itself  into  two  parts  —  Persia  and 
Greece.  All  that  was  not  Persia  was  Greece  :  all  that 
was  not  Greece  was  Persia.  The  Greek  traveller  was 
prepared  to  describe  the  one  section  to  the  other  sec- 
tion ;  and  having  done  this,  to  relate  in  a  connected 
shape  the  recent  tremendous  struggle  of  the  one  sec- 
tion with  the  other.rHere  was  Captain  Cook  fresh 
from  his  triple  circuftmavigation  of  the  world  :  here 
was  Mungo  Park  fresh  from  the  Niger  and  Timbuctoo  : 
tere  was  Bruce,  fresh  from  the  coy  fountains  of  the 
Nile :  here  was  Phipps,  Franklin,  Parry,  from  the 
Ajctic  circle  :  here  was  Leo  Africanus  from  Moorish 


STYLE.  231 

palaces  :  here  was  ManJeville  from  Prester  John,  from 
the  Cham  of  Tartary,  and  from  the  golden  cities  of 
Ilindostan  ;  from  Agra  and  Lahore  of  the  Great  Mo- 
gul. '  This  was  one  side  of  the  medal ;  and  on  the 
other  was  the  patriotic  historian  who  recorded  what  all 
had  heai'd  by  fractions,  but  none  in  the  whole  series. 
Now,  if  we  consider  how  rare  was  either  character  in 
ancient  times,  how  diflBcult  it  was  to  travel  where  no 
license  made  it  safe,  where  no  preparations  in  roads, 
inns,  carriages,  made  it  convenient ;  that  even  five 
centuries  in  advance  of  this  era,  little  knowledge  was 
generally  circulated  of  any  region,  unless  so  far  as  it 
had  been  traversed  by  the  Roman  legions ;  considering 
the  vast  credulity  of  the  audience  assembled  —  a  gulf 
capable  of-4}vallowing  mountains  ;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  that:  here  was  a  man  fresh  from  the  Pyramids 
and  the  Nile^^  from  Tyre,  from  Babylon,  and  the  tem- 
ple of  Belusj—  a  traveller  who  had  gone  in  with  his 
sickle  to  a  harvest  yet  untouched  —  that  this  same 
man,  considered  as  an  historian,  spoke  of  a  struggle 
with  which  the  earth  was  still  agitated  ;  that  the  people 
who  had  triumphed  so  memorably  in  this  war,  hap- 
pened to  be  the  same  people  who  were  then  listening  ; 
that  the  leaders  in  this  glorious  war,  whose  names  had 
already  passed  into  spiritual  powers,  were  the  fathers 
of  the  present  audience  ;  combining  into  one  picture 
all  these  circumstances  —  one  must  admit  that  no  such 
meeting  between  giddy  expectation,  and  the  very  ex- 
cess of  power  to  meet  its  most  clamorous  calls,  is 
ikely  to  have  occurred  before  or  since  upon  this  earth. 
Hither  had  assembled  people  from  the  most  inland  and 
most  illiterate  parts  of  Greece  ;  people  that  would  have 
settled  a  pension  for  life  upon  any  man  who  would 


232  STYLE. 

have  described  to  them  so  much  as  a  crocodile  or  ich- 
neumon. To  these  people,  the  year  of  his  public  reci- 
tation would  be  the  meridian  year  of  theu-  lives.  He 
saw  that  the  whole  scene  would  become  almost  a  dra- 
matic work  of  art ;  in  the  mere  gratification  of  their 
curiosity,  the  audience  might  be  passive  and  neutral  ; 
in  the  history  of  the  war,  they  became  almost  actors, 
as  in  a  dramatic  scene.  This  scenical  position  could 
not  escape  the  traveller-historian.  His  work  was  re- 
cited with  the  exaggeration  that  belongs  to  scenic  art. 
It  was  read  probably  with  gesticulations  by  one  of 
those  thundering  voices,  which  Aristophanes  calls  a 
'  damnable  '  voice,  from  its  ear-piercing  violence. 

Prose  is  a  thing  so  well  known  to  all  of  us,  most  of 
our  '  little  accounts  '  from  shoemakers,  dress-makers, 
&c.  being  made  out  in  prose  —  most  of  our  sorrows  and 
of  our  joys  having  been  communicated  to  us  through 
prose,  and  very  few  indeed  through  metre,  (unless  on 
St.  Valentine's  day,)  that  its  further  history,  after  leav- 
ing its  original  Olympic  cradle,  must  be  interesting  to 
everybody.  Who  were  they  that  next  took  up  the  lit- 
erary use  of  Prose  ?  Confining  our  notice  to  people  of 
celebrity,  we  may  say  that  the  House  of  Socrates  {Do- 
mus  Socralica  is  the  expression  of  Horace)  were  thosp 
who  next  attempted  to  popularize  Greek  prose  ;  viz. 
the  old  gentleman  himself,  the  founder  of  the  concern, 
and  his  two  apprentices,  Plato  and  Xenophon.  "We 
acknowledge  a  sneaking  hatred  towards  the  whole 
household,  founded  chiefly  on  the  intense  feeling  we 
entertain  that  all  three  were  humbugs.  We  own  the 
Btony  impeachment.  Aristotle,  who  may  be  looked 
upon  as  literary  grandson  to  Socrates,  is  quite  a  difier- 
ent  person.     But  for  the  rest  we  cherish  a  .sentimenta. 


STYLE. 


233 


I  may  we  call  it  a  Platonic?)  disgust.     As  relates  to 
the  style,  however,  in  which   they  have  communicated 
their  philosophy,  one  feature  of  peculiarity  is  too  re- 
markable to  pass  without  comment.     Some  years  ago, 
in  one  of  our  four  or  five  Quarterly  Reviews,  (Theolo- 
gical it  was,  Foreign,  or  else  Westminster,)  a  critical 
opinion  was  delivered  with  respect  to  a  work  of  Coler- 
id<xe's  which  opens  a  glimpse  into  the  true  philosophy 
ofVose  composition.     It  was  not  a  very  good-natured 
opinion  in  that  situation,  since  it  was  no  more  true  of 
Coleridge  than  it  is  of  every  other  man  who  adopts  the 
same  aphoristic  form  of  expression  for  his  thoughts  ; 
but  it  was  eminently  just.      Speaking  of  Coleridge's 
'  Aphorisms,'  the   reviewer   observed  —  that   this    de- 
tached and  insulated  form  of  delivering  thoughts  was, 
in  efi-ect,  an   evasion  of  all   the   difficulties  connected 
with    composition.     Every  man  as  he  walks  through 
the  streets,  may  contrive  to  jot  down  an  independent 
thought ;  a  short-hand  memorandum  of  a  great  truth. 
So  far  as  that  purpose  is  concerned,  even  in  tumultu 
ous  London. 

'  Pur»  sunt  platen,  nihil  ut  meditantibus  obstet.' 

Standing  on  one  leg  you  may  accomplish  this.  The 
labor  of  composition  begins  when  you  have  to  put  your 
separate  threads  of  thought  into  a  loom  ;  to  weave  them 
into  a  continuous  whole  ;  to  connect,  to  introduce  them ; 
to  blow  them  out  or  expand  them  ;  to  carry  them  to  a 
close  All  this  evil  is  evaded  by  the  aphoristic  form. 
This  one  remark,  we  repeat,  lifts  up  a  corner  of  that 
curtain  which  hangs  over  the  difficult  subjects  of  style 
and  composition.  Indicating  what  is  not  in  one  form, 
It  points  to  what  is  in  others.     It  was  an  original  re- 


234  si^chiL. 

mark,  we  doubt  not,  to  the  reviewer.  But  it  is  too 
weighty  and  just  to  have  escaped  meditative  men  in 
former  times  ;  and  accordingly  the  very  same  remark 
will  br  found  ane  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  expanded 
in  the  Huetiana. 

But  what  relation  has  this  remark  to  the  House  of 
Socrates  ?  Did  they  Avrite  by  aphorisms  ?  No,  cer- 
tainly ;  but  they  did  what  labors  with  the  same  radical 
defect,  considered  in  relation  to  the  true  difficulties  of 
composition.  Let  us  dedicate  a  paragraph  to  these 
great  dons  of  literature.  If  we  have  any  merely  Eng- 
lish scholars  amongst  our  readers,  it  may  be  requisite 
first  to  inform  them  that  Socrates  himself  wrote  noth- 
ing. He  was  too  much  occupied  with  his  talking  — 
'  ambitiosa  loquela.'  In  this  respect,  Socrates  differed, 
as  in  some  others  that  we  could  mention,  from  the  late 
Mr,  Coleridge  —  who  found  time  both  for  talking  and 
for  writing  at  the  least  ten  volumes  octavo.  From  the 
pupils  of  Socrates  it  is  that  we  collect  his  pretended 
philosophy  ;  and  as  there  were  only  two  of  these  pupils 
who  published,  and  as  one  of  them  intensely  contradicts 
the  other,  it  would  be  found  a  hard  matter  at  Nisi 
Prius  to  extract  any  verdict  as  to  what  it  was  that 
constituted  the  true  staple  of  the  Socratic  philosophy. 
We  fear  that  any  jury,  who  undertook  that  question, 
would  finally  be  carted  to  the  bounds  of  the  county, 
and  shot  into  the  adjacent  county  like  a  ton  of  coals. 
For  Xenophon  uniformly  introduces  the  worthy  hen- 
pecked philosopher  as  prattling  innocent  nothings, 
more  limpid  than  small  beer  ;  whilst  Plato  never  lets 
him  condescend  to  any  theme  below  those  of  Hermes 
Trismegistus,  or  Thomas  Aquinas.  One  or  other  must 
be  a  liar.     And  the  manner  of  the  philosopher,  under 


sxYiiE.  235 

these  two  Boswellian  reporters,  is  not  less  different 
than  his  matter:  with  Xenophon,  he  reminds  us  much 
of  an  elderly  hen,  superannuated  a  little,  performing 
'  the  hen's  march,'  and  clucking  vociferously  ;  with 
Plato,  he  seems  much  like  a  deep-mouthed  houad  in  a 
chase  after  some  unknown  but  perilous  game  ;  much  as 
such  a  hound  is  described  by  Wordsworth  ranging  ovei 
the  aerial  heights  of  Mount  Righi,  his  voice  at  times 
muffled  by  mighty  forests,  and  then  again  swelling  as 
he  emerges  upon  the  Alpine  breezes  ;  whilst  the  vast 
intervals  between  the  local  points  from  which  the 
intermitting  voice  ascends,  proclaim  the  storm-like 
pace  at  which  he  travels.  In  Plato,  there  is  a  gloomy 
grandeur  at  times  from  the  elementary  mysteries  of 
man's  situation  and  origin,  snatches  of  music  from 
some  older  and  Orphic  philosophy,  which  impress  a 
vague  feeling  of  solemnity  towards  the  patriarch  of  the 
school,  though  you  can  seldom  trace  his  movement 
through  all  this  high  and  vapory  region  ;  you  would  be 
happy,  therefore,  to  believe  that  there  had  been  one 
word  of  truth  in  ascribing  such  colloquies  to  Socrates  ; 
but  how  can  that  be,  when  you  recollect  the  philosophic 
vappa  of  Xenophon,  seems  to  pass  the  deciphering 
power  of  QEdipus. 

Now,  this  body  of  inexplicable  discord  between  the 
two  evangelists  of  Socrates,  as  to  the  whole  sources 
from  which  he  drew  his  philosophy,  as  to  the  very 
wells  from  which  he  raised  it,  and  the  mode  of  medi- 
cating the  draught,  makes  it  the  more  worthy  of  remark 
that  both  should  have  obstinately  adopted  the  same 
disagreeable  form  of  composition.  Both  exhibit  the 
whole  of  their  separate  speculations  under  the  form  of 
dialogue.     It  is  always  Socrates  and  Crito,  or  Socrates 


83G  sxYiE. 

and  Phaedrus,  or  Socrates  and  Ischomaclius ;  in  fact, 
Socrates  and  some  man  of  straw  or  good-humored  nine- 
pin  set  up  to  be  bowled  down  as  a  matter  of  course. 
How  inevitably  the  reader  feels  his  fingers  itching,  to 
take  up  the  cudgels  instead  of  Crito  for  one  ten  min- 
utes !  Had  we  been  favored  with  an  interview,  we  can 
answer  for  it  that  the  philosopher  should  not  have  had 
it  all  his  own  way  :  there  should  have  been  a  '  scratch' 
at  least  between  us  ;  and  instead  of  waiting  to  see  Crito 
punished  without  delivering  one  blow  that  would  '  have 
made  a  dent  in  a  pound  of  butter,'  posterity  should 
have  formed  a  ring  about  us,  crying  out  — '  Pull  baker, 
pull  devil '  —  according  as  the  accidents  of  the  struggle 
went  this  way  or  that.  If  dialogue  must  be  the  form, 
at  least  it  should  not  have  been  collusive  dialogue. 
Whereas,  with  Crito  and  the  rest  of  the  men  who  were 
in  training  for  the  part  of  disputants,  it  was  a  matter  of 
notoriety  —  that,  if  they  presumed  to  put  in  a  sly  thrust 
under  the  ribs  of  the  philosopher,  those  about  Socrates, 
of  amfi  Tov  2(uy.QaTi]v,  would  kick  them  into  the  kennel. 
It  was  a  permanent  '  cross  '  that  was  fought  throughout 
life  between  Socrates  and  his  obsequious  antagonists. 

As  Plato  and  Xenophon  must  have  hated  each  other 
with  a  theological  hatred,  it  is  a  clear  case  that  they 
tvould  not  have  harmonized  in  anything  if  they  had 
supposed  it  open  to  evasion.  They  would  have  got 
another  atmosphere  had  it  been  possible.  Diverging 
from  each  other  in  all  points  beside,  beyond  doubt 
they  would  have  diverged  as  to  this  form  of  dialogue, 
had  they  not  conceived  that  it  was  essential  to  the 
business  of  philosophy.  It  is  plain  from  this  one  fact, 
how  narrow  was  the  range  of  conception  which  the 
Socratic  school  applied  to  the  possible  m.odes  of  deal- 


STYLE.  237 

ing  %vitli  polemic  truth.     Tliey  i  epresented    the  case 
thus  :  —  Truth,  they  fancied,  offered  itself  by  separate 
units,  by  moments,  (to  borrow  a  word  from  dynamics,) 
by  what   Cicero   calls  '  apices  rerum  '   and  '  punctiun- 
culae.'     Each  of  these  must  be  sepai-ately  examined. 
It  was  like  the  items  in  a  disputed  account.     There 
must  be  an  auditor  to  check  and  revise  each  severally 
for    itself.     This  process   of    auditing  could    only  be 
carried  on  through  a  brisk  dialogue.     The  philosopher 
in   monologue   was   like  a  champion  at  a  tournament 
with  nobody  to  face  him.     He  was  a  chess-player  with 
no  opponent.     The  game  could  not  proceed.    But  how 
mean  and  limited  a  conception  this  was,  which  lay  as  a 
basis  for  the  whole  Socratic  philosophy,  becomes  appa- 
rent to  any  man  who  considers  any  ample  body  of  truth, 
whether  polemic  truth  or   not,  in  all  its  proportions. 
Take  Warbirrton's    Divine    Legation   of  Moses,  and 
imagine  a  Socratic  man  dealing  with  that.     How  does 
"Warburton  establish  that  Moses  held  such  a  legation  ? 
He  lays  dowTi  a  syllogism,  the  major  of  w'hich  asserts  a 
general  law  wdth  regard  to  false  or  unsound  religions, 
—  viz.  that  no  such  religion  could  sustain   itself,  or 
rear  itself,  to  any  height  or  duration  without  the  aid 
of   a    particular    doctrine,   viz.  —  the    doctrine    of   a 
resurrection.     This  is  the  major  ;  then  for  his  minor, 
Warburton  maintains,  that    the    Mosaic    religion  did 
sustain  itself  wdthout  that  doctrine.     Whence  the  con- 
clusion follows  formally  —  that,  having  accomplished 
what  was   hopeless    for    a    merely  human    invention, 
the  Mosaic  dispensation  could  not  have  been  such  a 
human   invention ;    that    it  enjoyed   a  secret    support 
rom  God  ;  and  that  Moses  was  truly  what  he  repre- 
sented  himself — God's    ambasspdor.     Consider   how 


238  STYLE. 

little  the  Platonic  and  Xenophontic  mode  of  philoso* 
phizing  would  apply  to  this  case.  You  may  see  fit  to 
deny  the  entire  major  proposition  of  the  bishop,  and 
yet  you  may  find  it  impossible  to  quarrel  with  the 
separate  arguments,  with  each  of  them  or  with  all 
of  them,  on  which  the  major  is  buUt.  All  may  be 
unexceptionable ;  and  yet,  when  the  record  is  closed, 
you  may  see  cause  to  say,  —  '  Bishop,  your  materials 
are  g3od  ;  but  they  are  not  strong  enough  to  support 
the  weighty  column  which  you  have  built  upon  them.' 
But  this  is  an  objection  which  cannot  be  made  until 
you  have  heard  him  to  the  end.  You  must  suspend  ; 
whereas  the  Socratic  man  never  does  suspend.  A 
man  who  brings  an  alphabet  of  reasons,  which  are 
professedly  to  avail  cumulatively  in  proof  of  his  thesis, 
will  not  consider  himself  answered  because  you  object 
to  P  or  Q  amongst  his  arguments.  '  My  proofs  are 
separate  and  independent,'  he  replies  ;  '  it  is  my  glory 
that  I  can  afibrd  to  give  you  a  pawn  or  so,  and  yet 
win  the  game.'  Another  mode  of  proceeding  against 
the  bishop  would  be  this  :  —  You  might  concede  his 
major,  and  utterly  deny,  as  many  men  have  denied, 
his  minor.  But  whether  joxi  see  cause  to  go  against 
the  upper  or  lower  proposition  ;  against  the  rule,  or 
against  the  subsumption  under  the  rule  ;  equally  you 
find  that  the  Socratic  mode  of  process  is  quite  unavail- 
ing, or  availing  only  by  accident.  And  even  this  is 
not  by  any  means  the  worst  case  supposable.  Here, 
by  the  supposition,  you  have  a  long  ti-ain  of  arguments, 
which  may  be  valid  as  a  cumulus,  notwithstanding  that, 
Socratically,  you  might  find  this  or  that  in  particular 
to  be  a  hollow  nut.  And  again,  such  a  train  may  be 
supposed,  to  which,  Socratically,  you  force  an  assen* 


STYLE.  239 

tenatim  and  articulatim  ;  all  the  items,  what  the  Ro- 
mans  called   the   nomina  in  a  creditor's  account,  are 
unimpeachable  ;  and  yet,  as  a  whole,  as  the  '  tottle  of 
a  whole,'  you  protest  against  them  as  insufficient  for 
the  prohandum.     They  are  good  ;   but  not  good  for  so 
much.     They  are   available,  and   for   the  length  of  a 
mile,  suppose  ;  but  they  do  not  reach  the  three  miles 
of  the  object  in  question.     In  the  first  case,  Socrates 
negatives  some  of  the  parts,  and  yet  he  cannot  nega- 
tive the  result.     He  is  partially  Wctorious,  and  yet  is 
beaten  as  to   the  whole.     In  the  second  case,  Socrates 
affirms  all  the  parts,  and  yet  cannot  affirm  the  result. 
He   is  universally  victorious  in  the  detail,  and  yet  is 
beaten  upon  the  whole  question.     Yet,  in  all  this,  we 
repeat  —  the    Socratic    weakness    is    not    adequately 
exposed.     There  is  a  far  larger  and  subtler  class  of 
cases  where   the   arguments   for   and   against   are  not 
susceptible  of  this   separate  valuation.     One   is  valid 
only  through  and  by  a  second,  which  second  again  is 
involved  in  a  third  ;  and  so   on.     Thus,  by  way  of  a 
brief  instance,  take  all  the  systems  of  political  economy 
which    have    grown    up    since    Turgot   and    Quesnel. 
They    are    all   polemic  —  that   is,    all   have    moulded 
themselves  in  hostility  to  some  other  ideas  —  all  had 
their  birth  in  opposition.     But  it  would  be  impossible 
to  proceed  Socratically  ^\^th  any  one  of  them.     If  you 
should  attempt  to   examine  Ricardo  sentence  by  sen- 
tence, or  even  chapter  by  chapter,  his  apologist  would 
.oudly  resist  such  a  process  as  inapplicable.     You  must 
hold  on  —  you  must  keep  fast  hold  of  certain  principles 
nntil  you  have  time  to  catch  hold  of  certain  others  — 
seven    or   eight,  suppose  ;    and  then  from  the   whole 
taken  in  continuation,  but  not  from  any  one   as  an 


240  STYLE. 

insulated  principle,  you  come  into  a  power  of  adjudi- 
cating upon  the  pretensions  of  the  whole  theory.  The 
doctrine  of  value,  for  example  —  could  you  understand 
that  taken  apart  ?  could  you  value  it  apart  ?  As  a 
Socratic  logician,  could  you  say  of  it  either  affirmatur 
or  negatur,  until  you  see  it  coming  round  and  revolving 
in  the  doctrines  of  rent,  profits,  machinery,  &c.,  which 
are  so  many  functions  of  value  ;  and  which  doctrines 
first  react  with  a  weight  of  verification  upon  the  other  ? 

These,  unless  parried,  are  knock-down  blows  to  the 
Socratic,  and  therefore  to  the  Platonic  philosophy,  if 
treated  as  a  modus  philosophandi  ;  and  if  that  philoso- 
phy is  treated  as  a  body  of  doctrines  apart  from  any 
modus  or  ratio  docendi,  we  should  be  glad  to  hear 
what  they  are.  For  we  never  could  find  any  either  in 
Plato  or  Xenophon,  which  are  insisted  on  as  essential. 
Accidental  hints  and  casual  suggestions  cannot  be 
viewed  as  doctrines  in  that  sense  which  is  necessary 
to  establish  a  separate  school.  And  all  the  German 
Tiedemanns  and  Tennemanns,  the  tedious  men  and  the 
tenpenny-men,  that  have  written  their  twelve  or  their 
eighteen  volumes  viritim  upon  Plato,  will  find  it  hard 
to  satisfy  their  readers  unless  they  make  head  against 
these  little  objections  ;  because  these  objections  seem 
to  impeach  the  very  method  of  the  '  Socraticae  Chartse,' 
and  except  as  the  authors  or  illustrators  of  a  method 
the  Socratici  are  no  school  at  all. 

But  are  not  we  travelling  a  little  out  of  our  proper 
field,  in  attacking  this  method  ?  Our  business  was 
with  this  method  considered  as  a  form  of  style,  not 
considered  as  a  form  of  logic.  True,  O  rigorous 
reader.  Yet  digressions  and  moderate  excursions  have 
a   license.       Besides   which,    on    strict    consideration. 


STYLE  241 

doubts  arise  whether  we  have  been  digressing.     Foi 
whatsoever  acted  as  a  power  on  Greek  prose,  through 
many  ages,  whatsoever  gave  it  a  bias  towards  any  one 
characteristic  excess,  becomes  important  in  virtue   of 
its  relations  to  our  subject.     Now,  the  form  of  dialogue 
so  obstinately  maintained  by  the  earliest  philosophers, 
who  used  prose  as   the  vehicle  of  their   teaching,  had 
the  unhappy  effect  of  impressing  from  the  earliest  era 
tjf  Attic  literature  a  colloquial   taint  upon   the  prose 
literature   of   that   country.     The    great    authority   of 
Socrates,  maintained  for   ages  by  all   sorts   of  fables, 
naturally  did  much  to  strengthen  this  original  twist  in 
the  prose   style.     About  fifty  years  after  the  death  of 
Socrates,  the  writings  of  Aristotle  were  beginning  to 
occupy  the  attention  of  Greece  ;  and  in  them  we  see 
as  resolute  a  departure   from  the  dialogue  form  as  in 
his  elders  of  the  same   house  the  adherence  to  that 
form  had  been  servile  and  bigoted.     His  style,  though 
arid  from   causes   that  will  hereafter  be  noticed,  was 
much  more  dignified,  or  at  least  more  grave  and  suit- 
able to  philosophic  speculation  than  that  of  any  man 
before   him.      Contemporary   with   the    early   life    of 
Socrates   was    a    truly   great    man,   Anaxagoras,    the 
friend  and  reputed  preceptor  of  Pericles.     It  is  prob- 
able he   may  have  written  in   the   style  of  Aristotle. 
Having  great  systematic  truths  to  teach,  such  as  solved 
existing  phenomena,  and  not  such  as  raised  fresh  phe- 
nomena for  future  solution,  he  would  naturally  adopt 
the  form  of  continuous  exposition.     Nor  do  we  at  this 
moment  remember  a  case  Df  any  very  great  man  who 
had  any  real  and  novel  truth  to  communicate,  having 
lidopted  the  form  of  dialogue,  excepting  only  the  case  of 
Galileo.     Plato,  indeed,  like  Galileo,  demanded  geoni- 
16 


242  STYLE. 

e try  as  a  qualification  in  his  students  —  that  is,  in  those 
who  paid  him  a  didaxTQov  or  fee  for  the  privilege  of  per- 
sonally attending  his  conversations  :  but  he  demanded 
no  such  qualification  in  his  readers ;  or  else  we  can 
assure  him  that  very  few  copies  of  his  Opera  Omnia 
would  have  heen  sold  in  Athens.  This  low  qualifica- 
tion it  was  for  the  readers  of  Plato,  and  still  more  for 
those  of  Xenophon,  which  operated  to  difi'use  the  rep- 
utation of  Socrates.  Besides,  it  was  a  rare  thing  in 
Greece  to  see  two  men  sounding  the  trumpet  on  behalf 
of  a  third.  And  we  hope  it  is  not  ungenerous  to  sus- 
pect, that  each  dallied  with  the  same  purpose  as  our 
Chatterton  and  Macpherson,  viz.  to  turn  round  on  the 
public  when  once  committed  and  compromised  by 
some  unequivocal  applause,  saying,  '  Gentlemen  of 
Athens,  this  idol  Socrates  is  a  phantom  of  my  brain : 
as  respects  the  philosophy  ascribed  to  him,  I  am  Soc- 
rates.' 

But  in  what  mode  does  the  conversational  taint,  which 
we  trace  to  the  writings  of  the  Socratici,  enforced  by  the 
imaginary  martyrdom  of  Socrates,  express  itself?  In 
what  forms  of  language  ?  By  what  peculiarities  ?  By 
what  defects  of  style  ?  We  Avill  endeavor  to  explain. 
One  of  the  Scaligers  (if  we  remember  it  was  the  elder,) 
speaking  of  the  Greek  article  6,  »,,  to,  called  it  loqua- 
cissimcB  gentis  Jlaiellum.  Now,  pace  superhissimi  viri, 
this  seems  nonsense  ;  because  the  use  of  the  article 
is  not  capricious,  but  grounded  in  the  very  structure 
and  necessities  of  the  Greek  language.  Garrulous  or 
not,  the  poor  men  were  obliged  by  the  philosophy  of 
their  tongue  to  use  the  article  in  certain  situations. 
And,  to  say  the  truth,  these  situations  were  very  muck 
»he  same  as  in  English.     Allowing  for  a  few  cases  of 


STYLE. 


243 


proper  names,  participles,  or  adjectives  postponed  to 
their  substantives,  &c.,  the  two   general  functions  of 
the  article  were,  —  1,  to  individualize,  as,   e.  g.  '  It  is 
not  any  sword  that  will  do,  I  will  have  the  sword  of  my 
father  ;  '  and  2,   the   very   opposite   function,  viz.,  to 
generalize  in  the  highest  degree  —  a  use   which  our 
best    English    grammars    wholly    overlook  —  as   e.  g. 
«  Let  the  sword  give  way  to  the  gown ; '  not  that  par- 
ticular sword,  but  every  sword,  where  each  is  used  as 
a  representative  symbol  of  the  corresponding  profes- 
sions.     '  The   peasant  presses   on   the    kibes   of  the 
courtier,'  where  the  class  is  indicated  by  the  individual. 
In  speaking  again  of  diseases,  and  the  organs  affected, 
we  usually  accomplish  this  generalization  by  means  of 
the    definite    article.     We    say,    '  He  suffered  from  a 
headache  ;  '  but    also   we  say,  '  from  the  headache  ; ' 
and  invariably  we  say,  '  He  died  of  the  stone,'    &c. 
And  though  we  fancy  it  a  peculiarity  of  the  French 
language  to  say,  '  Le  ccEur  lui  etoit  navre  de  douleur,' 
yet  we  ourselves  say,  '  The  heart  was  affected  in  his 
case.'     In  all  these  uses  of  the  definite  article,  there  is 
little  real  difference  between  the  Greek  language  and 
our  own.     The  main  diflerence  is  in  the  negative  use 
—  in  the  meaning  implied  by  the  absence  of  the  article, 
which,  with  the  Greeks,  expresses  our  article  a,  but 
with  us  is  a  form  of  generalization.     In  all  this  there 
was  nothing  left  free  to  the  choice.     And  Scaliger  had 
no  right  to  find  any  illustration  of  Greek  levity  in  what 
was  unavoidable. 

But  what  we  tax  as  undignified  in  the  Greek  prose 
jtyle,  as  a  badge  of  garrulity,  as  a  taint  from  which 
the  Greek  prose  never  cleansed  itself,  are  all  those 
forms  of  lively  colloquialism,  with  the  fretfulness,  and 


244  STYLE. 

hurry,  and  demonstrative  eneigy  cf  people  undulv 
excited  by  bodily  presence  and  by  ocular  appeals  to 
their  sensibility.  Such  a  style  is  picturesque  no  doubt ; 
so  is  the  Scottish  dialect  of  low  life  as  first  employed 
in  novels  by  Sir  Walter  Scott :  that  dialect  greatly 
assisted  the  characteristic  expression  :  it  furnished  the 
benefit  of  a  Doric  dialect ;  but  what  man  in  his  senses 
would  employ  it  in  a  grave  work,  and  speaking  in  his 
own  person  ?  Now,  the  colloquial  expletives,  so  pro- 
fusely employed  by  Plato,  his  uqu,  his  ye,  &c.,  the  forms 
of  his  sentences,  the  forms  of  his  transitions,  and  other 
intense  peculiarities  of  the  chattering  man,  as  opposed 
to  the  meditating  man,  have  crept  over  the  face  of 
Greek  literature  ;  and  though  some  people  think  every 
thing  holy  which  is  printed  in  Greek  characters,  we 
must  be  allowed  to  rank  these  forms  of  expression  as 
mere  vulgarities.  Sometimes,  in  Westmoreland,  if 
you  chance  to  meet  an  ancient  father  of  his  valley, 
one  who  is  thoroughly  vernacular  in  his  talk,  being 
unsinged  by  the  modern  furnace  of  revolution,  you 
may  have  a  fancy  for  asking  him  how  far  it  is  to  the 
next  town.  In  which  case,  you  will  receive  for  answer 
pretty  nearly  the  following  words  :  —  '  WTiy  like,  it's 
gaily  nigh  like,  to  four  mile  like.'  Now,  if  the  pruri- 
ency of  your  curiosity  should  carry  you  to  torment  and 
vex  this  aged  man,  by  pressing  a  special  investigation 
into  this  word  like,  the  only  result  is  likely  to  be  that 
you  will  kill  him,  and  do  yourself  no  good.  Call  it  an 
expletive,  indeed  !  a  filling  up  !  Why,  to  him  it  is  the 
only  indispensable  part  of  the  sentence ;  the  sole 
fixture.  It  is  the  balustrade  which  enables  him  to 
descend  the  stairs  of  conversation,  without  falling  over- 
board ;  and  if  the  word  were  proscribed  by  Parliament, 


STTiE.  245 

he  would  have  no  resource  but  in  everlasting  silence. 
Now,  the  expletives  of  Plato  are  as  gross,  and  must 
have  been,  to  the  Athenian,  as  unintelligible  as  those 
of  the  Westmoreland  peasant.  It  is  true  the  value,  the 
effect  to  the  feelings,  was  secured  by  daily  use,  and 
by  the  position  in  the  sentence.  But  so  it  is  to  the 
English  peasant.  Like  in  his  use  is  a  modifying,  a 
restraining  particle,  which  forbids  you  to  understand 
anything  in  a  dangerous,  unconditional  sense.  But 
then,  again,  the  Greek  particle  of  transition,  that 
eternal  Jt,  and  the  introductory  formula  of  ^tv  and 
it,  however  earnestly  people  may  fight  for  them,  be- 
cause in  fact  Greek,  is  now  past  mending.  The  St 
is  strictly  equivalent  to  the  whereby  of  a  sailor : 
'  whereby  I  went  to  London  ;  whereby  I  was  robbed  ; 
whereby  I  found  the  man  that  robbed  me.'  All  rela- 
tions, all  modes  of  succession  or  transition  are  indicated 
by  one  and  the  same  particle.  This  could  arise,  even 
as  a  license,  only  in  the  laxity  of  conversation.  But  the 
most  offensive  indication  of  the  conversational  spirit,  as 
presiding  in  Greek  prose,  is  to  be  found  in  the  morbid 
energy  of  oaths  scattered  over  the  face  of  every  prose 
composition  which  aims  at  rhetorical  effect.  The 
literature  is  deformed  with  a  constant  roulade  of  '  by 
Jove,'  'by  Minerva,'  &c.,  as  much  as  the  conversation 
of  high-bred  Englishmen  in  the  reign  of  Charles  IT. 
In  both  cases,  this  habit  belonged  to  a  state  of  tran- 
sition ;  and  if  the  prose  literature  of  Greece  had  been 
cultivated  by  a  succession  of  authors  as  extended  as 
that  of  England,  it  would  certainly  have  outworn  this 
badge  of  spurious  energy.  That  it  did  not,  is  a  proof 
that  the  Greek  literature  did  not  reach  the  consumma- 
tion of  art. 


246  STYLE. 


PAKT  III. 


Reader,  you  are  beginning  to  suspect  us.  '  How 
long  do  we  purpose  to  detain  people  ?  '  For  anything 
that  appears,  we  may  be  designing  to  write  on  to  the 
twentieth  century ;  for  twice  thirty  years.  '  And 
whither  are  we  going?'  Towards  what  object? 
which  is  as  urgent  a  quaere  as  how  far.  Perhaps 
we  may  be  leading  you  into  treason ;  or  (which  indeed 
is  pretty  much  the  same  thing)  we  may  be  paving  the 
way  to  '  Repeal.'  You  feel  symptoms  of  doubt  and 
restiveness  ;  and,  like  Hamlet  with  his  father's  ghost, 
you  will  follow  us  no  further  unless  we  explain  what  it 
is  that  we  are  in  quest  of. 

Our  course,  then,  for  the  rest  of  our  progress,  the 
outline  of  our  method,  will  pursue  the  following  ob- 
jects. We  shall  detain  you  a  little  longer  on  the 
Grecian  prose  literature  ;  and  we  shall  pursue  that 
literature  within  the  gates  of  Latium.  What  was  the 
Grecian  idea  of  style,  what  the  Roman,  will  appear 
as  a  deduction  from  this  review.  With  respect  to  the 
Greeks,  we  shall  endeavor  to  show  that  they  had  not 
arrived  at  a  full  expanded  consciousness  of  the  sepa- 
rate idea  expressed  by  style ;  and,  in  order  to  ac- 
count for  this  failure,  we  shall  point  out  the  deflexion 
—  the  bias  —  which  was  impressed  upon  the  Greek 
speculations  in  this  particular,  by  the  tendency  of  their 
civil  life.  That  was  made  important  in  the  eyes  of 
the  speculative  critic,  which  was  indispensable  for  the 
actual  practitioner  ;  that  was  indispensable  for  the  ac- 
tual practitioner,  which  was  exacted  by  the  course  of 
public  ambition.  The  political  aspirant,  who  needed 
a  command  of  fluent  eloquence,  sought  for  so  mucli 


STYLE.  249 

wluch  lie  will  be  resisted.  Were  this  done,  we  should 
no  longer  see  those  incoherent  sketches  which  are 
now  circulating  in  the  world  upon  questions  of  taste, 
of  science,  of  practical  address,  as  applied  to  the 
management  of  style  and  rhetoric  :  the  public  ear 
would  no  longer  be  occupied  by  feeble  Frenchmen  — 
RoUin,  Rapin,  Batteux,  Bonhours,  Du  Bos,  and  id 
genus  omne  ;  nor  by  the  elegant  but  desultory  Blair  ; 
nor  by  scores  of  others  who  bring  an  occasional  acute- 
ness  or  casual  information  to  this  or  that  subsection  of 
their  duty,  whilst  (taken  as  general  guides)  they  are 
universally  insufficient :  —  No  ;  but  the  business  of 
rhetoric,  the  management  of  our  mother-tongue  in 
all  offices  to  which  it  can  be  applied,  would  become  as 
much  a  matter  of  systematic  art,  as  regular  a  subject 
for  training  and  mechanic  discipline,  as  the  science  of 
discrete  quantity  in  Arithmetic,  or  of  continuous  quan- 
tity in  Geometry.  But  will  not  that  be  likely  to  im- 
press a  character  of  mechanic  monotony  upon  style^ 
like  the  miserable  attempts  at  reforming  handwriting  ? 
Look  at  them  ;  touch  them  ;  or,  if  you  are  afraid  of 
soiling  your  fingers,  hold  them  up  with  the  tongs  ;  they 
reduce  all  characteristic  varieties  of  writing  to  one 
form  of  blank  identity,  and  that  the  very  vilest  form 
of  scribbling  which  exists  in  Europe,  viz.  to  the 
wooden  scratch  (as  if  traced  -ndth  a  skewer)  univer- 
sally prevailing  amongst  French  people.  Vainly  would 
Aldorisius  apply  his  famous  art,  (viz.  the  art  of 
deciphering  a  man's  character  from  handwriting,)  to 
the  villanous  scrawls  wnich  issue  from  this  modern 
.aboratory  of  pseudo-calligraphy.  All  pupils  under 
Jiese  systems  Avrite  alike  :  the  predestined  thief  is 
confounded  with  the  patriot  or  martyr;   the  innocent 


250  STYLE. 

young  girl  with  tlie  old  hag  that  watches  country 
wagons  for  victims.  In  the  same  indistinguishable 
character,  so  far  as  this  reforming  process  is  con- 
cerned, would  Joseph  Hume  sign  a  motion  for  re- 
trenching three  half-crowns  jjer  annum  from  the 
orphan  daughter  of  a  man  who  had  died  in  battle  ; 
and  Queen  Adelaide  write  a  subscription  towards  a 
fresh  church  for  carrying  on  war,  from  generation  to 
generation,  upon  sin  and  misery. 

Now,  if  a  mechanic  system  of  training  for  Style 
would  have  the  same  levelling  effects  as  these  false 
calligraphies,  better  by  far  that  we  should  retain  our 
old  ignorance.  If  art  is  to  terminate  in  a  killing 
monotony,  welcome  the  old  condition  of  inartificial 
simplicity  !  —  So  say  you,  reader  :  aye,  but  so  say  we 
This  does  not  touch  us :  —  The  mechanism  we  speak 
of  will  apply  to  no  meritorious  qualities  of  style,  but  to 
its  faults,  and,  above  all,  to  its  awkwardnesses  ;  in  fact, 
to  all  that  now  constitutes  the  friction  of  style  ;  the 
needless  joltings  and  retardations  of  our  fluent  motion. 
As  to  the  motion  itself,  in  all  that  is  positive,  in  its 
derivation,  in  its  exciting  impulses,  in  its  speed,  and  its 
characteristic  varieties,  it  will  remain  unaffected.  The 
modes  of  human  feeling  are  inexhaustible ;  the  forms 
by  which  feeling  connects  itself  with  thought  are  inde- 
teasibly  natural ;  the  channels  through  which  both 
impress  themselves  upon  language  are  infinite.  All 
these  are  imperturbable  by  human  art :  they  are  past 
the  reach  of  mechanism  :  you  might  as  well  be  afraid 
that  some  steam-engine  —  Atlas,  suppose,  or  Samson, 
(whom  the  Germans  call  Simpson,)  —  should  perfid- 
iously hook  himself  to  the  earth's  axis,  and  run  away 
wdth  us  to  Jupiter.    Let  Simpson  do  his  worst,  we  defy 


STYLE.  25) 

him.  And  so  of  style  :  in  that  sense,  under  which  we 
all  have  an  interest  in  its  free  movements,  it  will  foi 
ever  remain  free.  It  wUl  defy  art  to  control  it.  In 
that  sense,  under  which  it  ever  can  be  mechanized,  we 
have  all  an  interest  in  wishing  that  it  should  he  so. 
Our  final  object  therefore  is  a  meritorious  one,  with  no 
intermixture  of  evil.  This  being  explained,  and  our 
course  onwards  having  been  mapped  out,  let  us  now 
proceed  with  our  work,  first  recapitulating  in  direct 
juxtaposition  with  each  other  the  points  of  our  future 
movement :  — 

1 .  Greek  and  Latin  literature  we  shall  examine  only 
for  the  sake  of  appraising  or  deducing  the  sort  of  ideas 
which  they  had  upon  the  subject  of  style.  It  will  ap- 
pear that  these  ideas  were  insufficient.  At  the  best 
they  were  tentative.  2.  From  them,  however,  may  be 
derived  a  hint,  a  dim  suggestion,  of  the  true  question 
in  arrear ;  and,  universally,  that  goes  a  great  way 
towards  the  true  answer.  '  Dimidium  facti^  says  the 
Roman  proverb,  '  qui  lene  ccepit,  habit.''  To  have 
made  a  good  beginning  is  one-half  of  the  work.  Pru- 
dens  interrogatio,  says  a  wise  modern ;  to  have  shaped 
your  question  skilfully,  is,  in  that  sense,  and  with  a 
view  to  the  answer,  a  good  beginning.  3.  Having 
laid  this  foundation  towards  an  answer,  we  shall  then 
attempt  the  answer  itself.  4.  After  which,  that  is, 
after  removing  to  the  best  of  our  power  such  difficul- 
ties to  the  higher  understanding  as  beset  the  subject 
C'f  style,  rhetoric,  composition,  having  (if  we  do  not 
greatly  delude  ourselves)  removed  the  one  great  bar 
to  a  right  theory  of  style,  or  a  practical  discipline  of 
Btyle,  we  shall  leave  to  some  future  work  of  more  suit- 
ible  dimensions  the  filling  up   of  our  outline.     Our- 


252  STYLE. 

selves  we  shall  confine  to  such  instant  suggestions  — 
practical,  popular,  broadly  intelligible,  as  require  no 
extensive  preparation  to  introduce  them  on  the  author's 
part ;  no  serious  effort  to  understand  them  on  the 
reader's.  "Whatever  is  more  than  this,  will  better  suit 
with  the  variable  and  elastic  proportions  of  a  separate 
book,  than  with  the  more  rigid  proportions  of  a  mis- 
cellaneous journal. 

Coming  back,  then,  for  hasty  purposes,  to  Greek 
literature,  we  wish  to  direct  the  reader's  eye  upon  a 
remarkable  phenomenon  in  the  history  of  that  litera- 
ture, and  subsequently  of  all  human  genius ;  not  so 
remarkable,  but  that  multitudes  must  have  noticed  it, 
and  yet  remarkable  enough  to  task  a  man's  ingenuity 
in  accounting  for  it.  The  earliest  known  occasion,  on 
which  this  phenomenon  drew  a  direct  and  strong  gaze 
upon  itself,  was  in  a  little  historical  sketch  composed 
by  a  Roman  officer  during  the  very  opening  era  of 
Christianity.  We  speak  of  the  Historia  Romano, 
written  and  published  about  the  very  year  of  the  Cru- 
cifixion by  Velleius  Paterculus  in  the  court  of  Tiberius 
Caesar,  the  introduction  to  which  presents  us  with  a 
very  interesting  outline  of  general  history.  The  style 
is  sometimes  clumsy  and  un-\vieldy,  but  nervous,  mas- 
culine, and  such  as  became  a  soldier.  In  higher  qual- 
ities, in  thoughtfulness,  and  the  spirit  of  finer  observa- 
tion, it  is  far  beyond  the  standard  of  a  mere  soldier ; 
and  it  shows,  in  common  with  many  other  indications 
lying  on  the  face  of  Roman  society  at  that  era,  how 
profoundly  the  great  struggles  that  had  recently  con- 
vulsed the  world  must  have  terminated  in  that  effect 
ivhich  followed  in  the  wake  of  the  French  Revolution  ; 
riz.  in  a  vast  stimulation  to  the  meditative  facultiei 


STYLE.  253 

of  man.  The  agitation,  the  frenzy,  the  sorrow  of  the 
times,  reacted  upon  the  human  intellect,  and  forced 
men  into  meditation.  Their  own  nature  was  held  up 
before  them  in  a  sterner  form.  They  were  compelled 
to  contemplate  an  ideal  of  man,  far  more  colossal  than 
's  brought  forward  in  the  tranquil  aspects  of  society ; 
and  they  were  often  engaged,  whether  they  would  or 
not,  with  the  elementary  problems  of  social  philosophy. 
Mere  danger  forced  a  man  into  thoughts  which  else 
were  foreign  to  his  habits.  Mere  necessity  of  action 
forced  him  to  decide.  Such  changes  went  along  with 
the  Reformation  ;  such  changes  went  along  with  the 
French  Revolution  ;  such  changes  went  along  with  the 
great  recasting  of  Roman  society  under  the  two  earliest 
Caesars.  In  every  page  of  Paterculus  we  read  the 
swell  and  agitation  of  waters  subsiding  from  a  deluge. 
Though  a  small  book,  it  is  tumid  with  revolutionary 
life.  And  something  also  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  ex- 
ample of  the  mighty  leader  in  the  Roman  Revolution, 
to  the  intellectual  and  literary  tastes  diffused  by  him — 

*  The  foremost  man  of  all  this  world,' 

who  had  first  shown  the  possibility  of  uniting  the  mili- 
tary leader's  truncheon  with  the  most  brilliant  stylus  of 
the  rhetorician.  How  wonderful  and  pleasing  to  find 
such  accomplishments  of  accurate  knowledge,  compre- 
hensive reading,  and  study,  combined  mth  so  search- 
ing an  intellect,  in  a  man  situated  as  Paterculus,  reared 
amongst  camps,  amidst  the  hurry  of  forced  marches, 
and  under  the  privations  of  solitary  outposts.  The  old 
race  of  hirsute  centurions  —  how  changed  I  — how  per- 
fectly regenerated  by  the  influence  of  three  Caesars  in 
succession  applying  a  paternal  encouragement  to  lite- 
rature. 


254  STYLE. 

Admiring  this  man  so  much,  we  have  paused  to 
review  the  position  in  which  he  stood.  Now,  recur- 
ring to  that  remark,  (amongst  so  many  original  re- 
marks,) by  which,  in  particular,  he  connects  himself 
with  our  subject,  we  may  venture  to  say  —  that,  if  it 
was  a  very  just  remark  for  his  experience,  it  is  far 
more  so  for  ours.  What  he  remarked,  what  he  founded 
upon  a  review  of  two  nations  and  two  literatures  —  we 
may  now  countersign  by  an  experience  of  eight  or 
nine.  His  remark  was  —  upon  the  tendency  of  intel- 
lectual power  to  gather  in  clusters ;  its  unaccountable 
propensity  (he  thought  it  such)  to  form  into  separate 
insulated  groups.  This  tendency  he  illustrates  first  in 
*wo  cases  of  Grecian  literature.  Perhaps  that  might 
have  been  an  insufficient  basis  for  a  general  theory. 
But  it  occurred  to  Paterculus  in  confirmation  of  his 
doctrine,  that  the  very  same  tendency  had  reappeared 
in  his  native  literature.  The  same  phenomenon  had 
manifested  itself,  and,  more  than  once,  in  the  history 
of  Roman  intellect ;  the  same  strong  nisus  of  great 
wits  to  gather  and  crystallize  about  a  common  nu- 
cleus. That  marked  gregariousness  in  human  genius 
had  taken  place  amongst  the  poets  and  orators  of 
Rome,  which  had  previously  taken  place  amongst  the 
poets,  orators,  and  artists  of  Greece.  What  impor- 
tance was  attached  by  Paterculus  to  this  interesting 
remark,  what  stress  he  laid  upon  its  appreciation  by 
the  reader,  is  evident  from  the  emphatic  manner  in 
which  he  introduces  it,  as  well  as  from  the  consc'ous 
disturbance  of  the  symmetry  which  he  incurs  rather 
than  suppress  it.  These  are  his  words  :  — '  Notwith- 
Itanding  that  this  section  of  my  work  has  considerably 
jutrun  the  proportions  of  that  model  which  I  had  laii 


STYLE.  256 

down  for  my  guidance,  and  although  perfectly  aware 
that,  in  circumstances  of  hurry  so  unrelenfiug,  which 
like  a  revolving  wheel  or  the  eddy  of  rapid  waters, 
allows  me  no  respite  or  paiise,  I  am  summoned  rather 
to  omit  what  is  necessary  than  to  court  what  is  re- 
dundant ;  still,  I  cannot  prevail  on  myself  to  forbear 
from  uttering  and  giving  a  pointed  expression  to  a 
thought  which  I  have  often  revolved  in  my  mind,  but 
to  this  hour  have  not  been  able  satisfactorily  to  account 
for  in  theory  :  {nequeo  tamen  temperare  mihi  quin  rem 
scepe  agitatam  animo  meo,  neque  ad  liquidiun  ratione 
perductam,  signem  stylo.')  Having  thus  bespoke  the 
reader's  special  attention,  the  writer  goes  on  to  ask  if 
any  man  can  sufficiently  wonder  on  observing  that 
eminent  genius,  in  almost  every  mode  of  its  develop- 
ment, {eminentissima  cujusque  professionis  ingenia,) 
had  gathered  itself  into  the  same  narrow  ring-fence  of 
a  single  generation.  Intellects  that  in  each  several 
department  of  genius  were  capable  of  distinguished 
execution,  {cujusque  clari  operis  capacia  ingenia,) 
had  sequestrated  themselves  from  the  great  stream 
and  succession  of  their  fellow-men  into  a  close  insu- 
lated community  of  time,  and  into  a  corresponding 
stage  of  proficiency  measured  on  their  several  scales 
of  merit,^"  {in  similitudinem  et  temporum  et  profectuum 
semetipsa  ah  aliis  separaverunt.)  "Without  giving  all 
the  exemplifications  by  which  Paterculus  has  supported 
this  thesis,  we  shall  cite  two  :  Una  {neque  multorum 
annorum  spatio  divisa)  cetas  per  divini  spiritus  viros, 
^schylum,  Sophoclem,  Euripidem,  illustravit  TragcB- 
diam.  Not  that  this  trinity  of  poets  was  so  contempo- 
rary as  brothers  are  ;  but  they  were  contemporary 
as   youthful   uncles   in   relation  to  elderly  nephews : 


256  STYLE. 

^Escliylus  was  viewed  as  a  senior  by  Sophocles,  Sopho- 
cles by  Euripides  ;  but  all  might  by  possibility  have 
met  together  (what  a  constellation !)  at  the  same  table. 
Again,  says  Paterculus,  Quid  ante  Isocrattm,  quid  post 
ejus  auditores,  clarum  in  oratoribusfuit  7  Nothing  of 
any  distinction  in  oratory  before  Isocrates,  nothing 
after  his  personal  audience.  So  confined  was  that 
orbit  within  which  the  perfection  of  Greek  tragedy 
within  which  the  perfection  of  Greek  eloquence  re- 
volved. The  same  law,  the  same  strong  tendency,  he 
insists,  is  illustrated  in  the  different  schools  of  Greek 
comedy  ;  and  again  of  Greek  philosophy.  Nay,  it  is 
more  extensively  illustrated  amongst  Greek  artists  in 
general :  '  Hoc  idem  evenisse  grammaticis,  plastis,  pic- 
toribus,  scalptoribus,  quisquis  temporum  institerit  notis 
—  reperiet.' 

From  Greece  Paterculus  translates  the  question  to 
his  own  country  in  the  following  pointed  manner : 
summing  up  the  whole  doctrine,  and  re-affirming  it  in 
a  form  almost  startling  and  questionable  by  its  rigor  — 
'  Adeo  artatum  angustiis  temporum,^  so  punctually 
concentrated  was  all  merit  within  the  closest  limits  of 
time,  '  ut  nemo  memorid  dignus,  alter  ab  altera  videri 
nequiverint  : '  no  man  of  any  consideration  but  he  might 
have  had  ocular  cognizance  of  all  others  in  his  own 
field  who  attained  to  distinction.  He  adds  —  '  Neque 
hoc  in  GrcBcis  quam  in  Romanis  evenit  magis.^ 

His  illustrations  from  the  Roman  literature  we  do 
not  mean  to  follow  :  one  only,  as  requisite  for  our 
purpose,  we  cite :  —  '  Oratio,  ac  vis  forensis,  perfec' 
'umqticB  proscB  eloquentice  decus  {pace  P.  Crassi  et 
Gracchorum  dixerim)  ita  universa  sub  principe  operis 
sui  eiupit  Tullio,  ut  mirari  neminem  possis  nisi  aut 


STYLE.  257 

Mb  illo  visum,  aut  qui  ilium  viderit.''  This  is  said  \vith 
epigrammatic  point ;  the  perfection  of  prose,  and  the 
brilliancy  of  style  as  an  artificial  accomplishment,  was 
80  identified  with  Cicero's  generation,  that  no  distin- 
guished artist,  none  whom  you  could  greatly  admire, 
but  might  be  called  his  contemporary  ;  none  so  much 
his  senior,  but  Cicero  might  have  seen  him  —  none  so 
much  his  junior,  but  he  might  have  seen  Cicero.  It  is 
true  that  Crassus,  in  Cicero's  infancy,  and  the  two 
Gracchi,  in  the  infancy  of  Crassus,  (neither  of  whom, 
therefore,  could  have  been  seen  by  Cicero,)  were 
memorably  potent  as  orators  ;  in  fact,  for  tragical  re- 
sults to  themselves,  (which,  by  the  way,  was  the  uni- 
versal destiny  of  great  Roman  orators;)  and  nobody 
was  more  sensible  of  their  majestic  pretensions,  merely 
as  orators,  than  Cicero  himself,  who  has,  accordingly, 
made  Crassus  and  Antony  predominant  speakers  in  his 
splendid  dialogues  De  Oratore.  But  they  were  merely 
demoniac  powers,  not  artists.  And  with  respect  to 
these  early  orators,  (as  also  with  respect  to  some 
others,  whose  names  we  have  omitted,)  Paterculus 
has  made  a  special  reservation.  So  that  he  had  not 
at  all  overlooked  the  claims  of  these  great  men  ;  but 
he  did  not  feel  that  any  real  exception  to  his  general 
law  was  created  by  orators,  who  were  indeed  wild 
organs  of  party  rage  or  popular  frenzy,  but  who  wil- 
fully disdained  to  connect  themselves  with  the  re- 
finements of  literature.  Such  orators  did  not  regard 
themselves  as  intellectual,  but  as  political,  powers, 
"^onfiniug  himself  to  oratory,  and  to  the  perfection  of 
prose  composition,  written  or  spoken,  in  the  sense  of 
great  literary  accomplishments,  beginning  in  natural 
power  hut  perfected  by  art,  Paterculus  stands  to  hi« 
17 


258  STTLB. 

assertion  —  that  tliis  mode  of  humau  genius  had  so 
crowded  its  development  within  the  brief  circuit  of 
Cicero's  life,  (threescore  years  and  three,)  as  that  the 
total  series  of  Roman  orators  formed  a  sort  of  circle, 
centring  in  that  supreme  orator's  person,  such  as,  in 
modern  times,  we  might  call  an  electrical  circle ;  each 
link  of  the  chain  having  been  either  electrified  by 
Cicero,  or  having  electrified  him.  Seneca,  with  great 
modesty,  repeats  the  very  same  assertion  in  other 
words  :  '  Quicquid  Romana  facundia  habuit,  quod  iri' 
solenti  GrcecicB  aut  opponat  aut  prceferat,  circa  Cice- 
ronem  ejfloruit.^  A  most  ingenuous  and  self-forgetting 
homage  in  him  ;  for  a  nobler  master  of  thinking  than 
himself,  Paganism  has  not  to  show,  nor  —  when  the 
cant  of  criticism  has  done  its  worst  —  a  more  brilliant 
master  of  composition.  And  were  his  rule  construed 
literally,  it  would  exclude  the  two  Plinys,  the  two 
Senecas,  Tacitus,  Quinctilian,  and  others,  from  the 
matricula  of  Roman  eloquence.  Not  one  of  these 
men  could  have  seen  Cicero  ;  all  were  divided  by 
more  than  one  generation;  and  yet,  most  unquestiona- 
bly, though  all  were  too  reasonable  to  have  fancied 
themselves  any  match  for  the  almighty  orator  in  public 
speaking,  yet  not  one  but  was  an  equally  accomplished 
artist  in  written  composition,  and  under  a  law  of  arti- 
ficial style  far  more  difficult  to  manage. 

However,  with  the  proper  allowances  for  too  un- 
nodified  a  form  of  expression,  we  must  allow  that  the 
singular  phenomenon  first  noticed  by  Paterculus,  as 
connecting  itself  with  the  manifestations  of  human 
genius,  is  sufficiently  established  by  so  much  of  human 
history  as  even  he  had  witnessed.  For,  if  it  should 
be  alleged  that   political   changes    accounted  for  the 


STYLE.  259 

extinction  of  oral  eloquence,  concurrently  with  the 
death  of  Cicero,  still  there  are  cases  more  than 
enough,  even  in  the  poetry  of  both  Greece  and  Rome, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  arts,  which  bear  out  the  general 
fact  of  human  genius  coming  forward  by  insulated 
groups  and  clusters ;  or,  if  Pagan  ages  had  left  that 
point  doubtful,  we  haAe  since  witnessed  Christian 
repetitions  of  the  truth  on  the  very  widest  scale.  The 
Italian  age  of  Leo  X.  in  the  fifteenth  century,  the 
French  age  of  Louis  XIV,  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  German  age,  commencing  with  Kant,  Wieland, 
Goethe,  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries  — 
all  illustrate  the  tendency  to  these  intermitting  parox- 
ysms of  intellectual  energy.  The  lightning  and  the 
storm  seem  to  have  made  the  circuit  of  the  whole 
European  heavens,  to  have  formed  vortices  succes- 
sively in  every  civUized  land,  and  to  have  discharged 
themselves,  by  turns,  from  every  quarter  of  the  atmos- 
phere. In  our  own  country  there  have  been  three 
such  gatherings  of  intellectual  power:  —  1st,  the  age 
of  Shakspeare,  Spenser,  and  the  great  school  of  dram- 
atists that  were  already  dying  out  in  the  latter  days  of 
Ben  Jonson,  (1636,)  and  were  finally  extinguished  by 
the  great  civil  commotions  beginning  in  1642  ;  2dly, 
the  age  of  Queen  Anne  and  George  I. ;  3dly,  the  age 
commencing  with  Cowper,  partially  roused,  perhaps, 
by  the  American  war,  and  afterwards  so  powerfully 
stimulated  (as  was  the  corresponding  era  of  Kant  and 
Wieland)  by  the  French  Revolution.  This  last  vol- 
canic eruption  of  the  British  genius  has  displayed 
enormous  power  and  splendor.  Let  malice  and  the 
base  detraction  of  contemporary  jealousy  say  what  it 
will,    greater  originality  of   genius,    more    expansive 


260  STYLE. 

variety  of  talent,  never  was  exhibited  than  in  our  own 
country  since  the  year  1793.  Every  mode  of  excel- 
lence, except  only  dramatic  excellence,  (in  which  we 
have  nothing  modern  to  place  by  the  side  of  Schiller's 
Wallenstein,)  has  been  revealed  in  dazzling  lustre. 
And  he  that  denies  it  —  may  he  be  suffocated  by  his 
own  bilious  envy  ! 

But  the  point  upon  which  we  wish  to  fix  the  reader's 
attention,  in  citing  this  interesting  observation  of  the 
Roman  officer,  and  the  reason  for  which  we  have  cited 
it  at  all,  is  not  so  much  for  the  mere  fact  of  these 
spring- tides  occurring  in  the  manifestations  of  human 
genius,  intermitting  pulses  (so  to  speak)  in  human 
energies,  as  the  psychological  peculiarity  which  seems 
to  affect  the  cycle  of  their  recurrences.  Paterculus 
occupies  himself  chiefly  with  the  causes  of  such  phe- 
nomena ;  and  one  main  cause  he  suggests  as  lying  in 
the  emulation  which  possesses  men  when  once  a 
specific  direction  has  been  impressed  upon  the  public 
competitions.  This,  no  doubt,  is  one  of  the  causes. 
But  a  more  powerful  cause,  perhaps,  lies  in  a  prin- 
ciple of  union  than  in  any  principle  of  division  amongst 
men  —  viz.  in  the  principle  of  sympathy.  The  great 
Italian  painters,  for  instance,  were  doubtless  evoked  in 
such  crowds  by  the  action  of  this  principle.  To  hear 
the  buzz  of  idolizing  admiration  settling  for  years 
upon  particular  works  of  art  and  artists,  kindles  some- 
thing better  than  merely  the  ambition  and  rivalship  of 
men ;  it  kindles  feelings  happier  and  more  favorable 
to  excellence  —  viz.  genial  love  and  comprehension  of 
the  qualities  fitted  to  stir  so  profound  and  lasting  an 
emotion.  This  contagion  of  sympathy  runs  electrically 
through  society,  searches  high  and  low  for  congeniaii 


STYLE.  261 

powers,  and  suflVrs  none  to  lurk  unkno\vn  to  the  pos- 
sessor. A  vortex  is  created  which  draws  into  its  suction 
whatever  is  liable  to  a  similar  action.  But,  not  to  linger 
upon  this  question  of  causes,  what  we  wish  to  place 
under  the  reader's  eye  is  rather  the  peculiar  type 
which  belongs  to  these  revolutions  of  national  intellect, 
according  to  the  place  which  each  occupies  in  the 
order  of  succession.  Possibly  it  would  seem  an  over- 
refinement  if  we  were  to  suggest  that  the  odd  terms 
in  the  series  indicate  creative  energies,  and  the  even 
terms  reflective  energies ;  and  we  are  far  enough  from 
affecting  the  honors  of  any  puerile  hypothesis.  But, 
in  a  general  way,  it  seems  plausible  and  reasonable, 
that  there  will  be  alternating  successions  of  power  in 
the  first  place,  and  next  of  reaction  upon  that  power 
from  the  reflective  faculties.  It  does  seem  natural, 
that  first  of  all  should  blossom  the  energies  of  cre- 
ative power ;  and,  in  the  next  era  of  the  literature, 
when  the  consciousness  has  been  brightened  to  its 
own  agencies,  will  be  likely  to  come  forward  the  re- 
agencies  of  the  national  mind  on  what  it  has  created. 
The  period  of  meditation  will  succeed  to  the  period  of 
production.  Or,  if  the  energies  of  creation  are  again 
partially  awake,  finding  themselves  forestalled,  as 
regards  the  grander  passions,  they  will  be  likely  to 
settle  upon  the  feebler  elements  of  manners.  Social 
differences  wHl  now  fix  the  attention  by  way  of  sub- 
stitute for  the  bolder  differences  of  nature.  Should  a 
third  period,  after  the  swing  of  the  pendulum  through 
*n  arch  of  centuries,  succeed  for  the  manifestation  of 
the  national  genius,  it  is  possible  that  the  long  interval, 
Btnce  the  inaugiu-al  era  of  creative  art,  will  have  so 
jhanged  all  the  elements  of  society,  and  the  aspects 


B62  STYLE. 

of  life,  as  to  restore  the  mind  to  much  of  its  infant 
freedom ;  it  may  no  longer  feel  the  capti^dty  of  an 
Imitative  spirit  in  dealing  with  the  very  same  class  of 
creations  as  exercised  its  earliest  powers.  The  original 
national  genius  may  now  come  forward  in  perfectly 
new  fonns,  without  the  sense  of  oppression  from  inim- 
itable models.  The  hoar  of  ages  may  have  withdrawn 
some  of  these  models  from  active  competition.  And 
thus  it  may  not  be  impossible  that  oscillations  between 
the  creative  and  reflective  energies  of  the  mind  might 
go  on  through  a  cycle  of  many  ages. 

In  our  own  literature  we  sec  this  scheme  of  oscilla- 
tions illustrated.  In  the  Shakspeare  period  we  see  the 
fulness  of  life  and  the  enormity  of  power  throwing  up 
a  tropical  exuberance  of  vegetation.  A  century  after- 
wards we  see  a  generation  of  men,  lavishly  endowed 
with  genius,  but  partly  degraded  by  the  injurious 
training  of  a  most  profligate  era  growing  out  of  gieat 
revolutionary  convulsions,  and  partly  lowered  in  the 
tone  of  their  aspirations  by  a  despair  of  rivalling  the 
great  creations  of  their  predecessors.  We  see  them 
universally  acquiescing  in  humbler  modes  of  ambition  ; 
showing  sometimes  a  corresponding  merit  to  that  of 
their  greatest  forefathers,  but  merit  (if  sometimes 
equal)  yet  equal  upon  a  lower  scale.  Thirdly.  In  the 
eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  we  see  a  new  birth 
of  original  genius,  of  which  it  is  not  lawful  to  aflSrm 
any  absolute  inferiority,  even  by  comparison  with  the 
Shakspearian  age  of  Titans.  For  whatsoever  is  strictly 
und  thoroughly  original,  being  sui  generis,  cannot  be 
better  or  worse  than  any  other  model  of  excellence 
which  is  also  original.  One  animal  structure,  com- 
pared with  another  of  a  diff'erent  class,  is  equally  gcod 


8TTLB. 


263 


md  perfect.     One  valley,  whicli  is  no  copy  of  another, 
but   has   a   separate   and  peculiar  beauty,  cannot  ba 
compared   for   any  purpose  of  disadvantage  with  an- 
other.    One  poem,  which  is  composed  upon  a  law  of 
its  own,  and  has  a  characteristic  or  sepai-ate  beauty  of 
its  own,  cannot  be  inferior  to  any  other  poem  what- 
soever.    The   class,  tbe  order,    may  be  inferior  ;  the 
Bcale  may  be  a  lower  one  ;  but  the  individual  work, 
the  degree  of  merit  marked  upon  the  scale,  must  be 
equal  —  if  only  the  poem  is  equally  original.     In  all 
such  cases,  understand,  ye  miserable  snarlers,  at  con- 
temporary merit,  that  the  puerile  gout  de  comparaison 
(as  La  Bruyere  calls  it)  is  out  of  place ;    universally 
you  cannot  affirm  any  imparity,  where  the  ground  is 
preoccupied  by  disparity.     Where  there  is  no  parity 
of  principle,  there  is  no  basis  for  comparison. 

Now,  passing  with  the  benefit  of  these  explanations, 
to  Grecian  literature,  we  may  observe  that  there  were 
in  that  field  of  human  intellect  no  more  than  two 
developments  of  power  from  first  to  last.  And,  per- 
haps, the  unlearned  reader  (for  it  is  to  the  praise  and 
honor  of  a  powerful  journal,  that  it  has  the  unlearned 
equally  with  the  learned  amongst  its  readers)  will  thank 
us  for  here  giving  him,  in  a  very  few  words,  such  an 
account  of  the  Grecian  literature  in  its  periods  of  mani- 
festation, and  in  the  relations  existing  between  these 
periods  —  that  he  shall  not  easily  forget  them. 

There  were,  in  illustration  of  the  Roman  aide-de- 
camp's^  doctrine,  two  groups  or  clusters  of  Grecian 
wits  ;  two  depositions  or  stratifications  of  the  national 
genius  ;  and  these  were  about  a  century  apart.  What 
Viakes  them  specially  rememberable  is  —  the  fact  that 
each  of  these  brilliant  clusters  had  gathered  separately 


264  STYLE. 

about  that  man  as  central  pivot,  who,  even  apart  from 
this  relation  to  the  literature,  was  otherwise  the  lead- 
ing spirit  of  his  age.  It  is  important  for  our  purpose 
—  it  will  be  interesting,  even  without  that  purpose,  for 
the  reader  —  to  notice  the  distinguishing  character,  or 
marks,  by  which  the  two  clusters  arc  separately  recog- 
nized ;  the  marks,  both  personal  and  chronological. 
As  to  the  personal  distinctions,  we  have  said  —  that 
in  each  case  severally  the  two  men,  who  offered  the 
nucleus  to  the  gathering,  happened  to  be  otherwise  the 
most  eminent  and  splendid  men  of  the  period.  Who 
were  they  ?  The  one  was  Pericles,  the  other  was 
Alexander  of  Macedon.  Except  Themistoclcs,  who 
may  be  ranked  as  senior  to  Pericles  by  just  one  gene- 
ration, (or  thirty-three  years,^^)  in  the  whole  deduction 
of  Grecian  annals  no  other  public  man,  statesman, 
captain-general,  administrator  of  the  national  resources, 
can  be  mentioned  as  approaching  to  these  two  men  in 
splendor  of  reputation,  or  even  in  real  merit.  Pisis- 
tratus  was  too  far  back  :  Alcibiades,  who  might  (chro- 
nologically speaking)  have  been  the  son  of  Pericles, 
was  too  unsteady,  and  (according  to  Mr.  Coleridge's 
coinage)  '  unreliable  ;  '  or,  perhaps,  in  more  correct 
English,  too  '  unrelyuponable.' 

Thus  far  our  purpose  prospers.  No  man  can  pre- 
tend to  forget  two  such  centres  as  Pericles  for  the  elder 
group,  or  Alexander  of  Macedon,  (the  '  strong  he-goat' 
of  Jewish  prophecy,)  for  the  junior.  Round  these  two 
foci,  in  two  different  but  adjacent  centuries  gathered 
the  total  starry  heavens  —  the  galaxy,  the  Pantheon  of 
Grecian  intellect.  All  that  Greece  produced  —  of 
iwful  solemnity  in  her  tragic  stage,  of  riotous  mirth 
and  fancy  in  her  comir  stage,  of  power  in   her  elo- 


STYLE. 


265 


quence,  of  wisdom  in  her  philosophy  ;  all  that  has 
Bince  tingled  in  the  ears  of  twenty-four  centuries,  of 
her  prosperity  in  the  arts,  her  sculpture,  her  architec- 
ture, her  painting,  her  music  —  everything,  in  short, 
excepting  only  her  higher  mathematics,  which  waited 
for  a  further  development — which  required  the  incu- 
bation of  the  musing  intellect  for  yet  another  century 

revolved    like    two   neighboring   planetary  systems 

about   these   two    solar  orbs.     Two  mighty  vortices, 
Pericles  and  Alexander  the  Great,  drew  into  strong 
eddies  about  themselves  all  the  glory  and  the  pomp  of 
Greek     literature,    Greek    eloquence,   Greek   wisdom, 
Greek   art.     Next,   that  we  may  still  more  severely 
search  the  relations  in  all  points  between  the  two  sys- 
tems, let  us  assign  the  chronological  locus  of  each: 
because  that  will  furnish  another  element  towards  the 
exact  distribution  of  the  chart  representing  the  motion 
and  the  oscillations  of  human  genius.     Pericles  had  a 
very  long  administration.     He  was  Prime  Minister  of 
Athens  for  upwards  of  one  entire  generation.     He  died 
in  the  year  429  before  Christ,  and  in  a  very  early  stage 
of  that  great  Peloponnesian  war,  which  was  the  one 
sole  intestine  war  for  Greece  affecting  every  nook  and 
angle  in  the  land.     Now,  in  this  long  public  life  of 
Pericles,  we  are  at  liberty  to  fix  on  any  year  as  his 
chronological  locus.     On  good  reasons,  not  called  for 
in  this  place,  we  fix  on  the  year  444.     This  is  too  re- 
•narkable  to  be  forgotten.     Four,  four,  four,  what  at 
some  games  of  cards  is  called  a  '  prial,'    (we  presume, 
by  an  elision  of  the  first  vowel  a,  for  parial,)  forms  an 
era  which  no   man  can  forget.     It  was  the  fifteenth 
;ear  before  the  death  of  Pericles,  and  not  far  from  the 
bisecting  year  of  his  political  life.     Now,  passing  to 


266  STYLE. 

the  other  system,  the  locus  of  Alexander  is  quite  as 
remarkable,  as  little  liable  to  be  forgotten  when  once 
indicated,  and  more  easily  determined,  because  select- 
ed from  a  narrower  range  of  choice.  The  exact  chro- 
nological locus  of  Alexander  the  Great  is  333  years 
before  Christ.  Everybody  knows  how  brief  was  the 
career  of  this  great  man :  it  terminated  in  the  year  320 
before  Christ.  But  the  annus  mirabilis  of  his  public 
life,  the  most  effective  and  productive  year  throughout 
his  oriental  anabasis,  was  the  year  333  before  Christ. 
Here  we  have  another  'j^ri'aZ,'  a  prial  of  threes,  for 
the  locu^  of  Alexander. 

Thus  far  the  elements  are  settled,  the  chronological 
longitude  and  latitude  of  the  two  great  planetary  sys- 
tems into  which  the  Greek  literature  breaks  up  and  dis- 
tributes itself:  444  and  333  are  the  two  central  years 
for  the  two  systems  :  allowing,  therefore,  an  interspace 
of  1 1 1  years  between  the  foci  of  each.  It  is  thought 
by  some  people,  that  all  those  stars  which  you  see 
glittering  so  restlessly  on  a  keen  frosty  night  in  a  high 
latitude,  and  which  seem  to  have  been  sown  broadcast 
with  as  much  carelessness  as  grain  lies  on  a  threshing- 
floor  —  here  showing  vast  zaarahs  of  desert  blue  sky  ; 
there  again  lying  close  and  to  some  eyes  presenting 

♦  The  beauteous  semblance  of  a  flock  at  rest,' 

are  in  fact  all  gathered  into  zones  or  strata  ;  that  our 
own  wicked  little  earth,  (with  the  whole  of  our  pecu- 
liar solar  system,)  is  a  part  of  such  a  zone  ;  and  that 
all  this  perfect  geometry  of  the  heavens,  these  radii  in 
the  mighty  wheel,  would  become  apparent,  if  we,  the 
spectators,  could  but  survey  it  from  the  true  centre 
■vMch  centre  may  be  far  too  distani   for  any  vision  of 


^      8TT1E.  267 

man,  naked  or  armed,  to  reach.  However  that  may 
be,  it  is  most  instructive  to  see  how  many  apparent 
scenes  of  confusion  break  up  into  orderly  arrangement, 
when  you  are  able  to  supply  an  a  priori  principle  of 
organization  to  their  seeming  chaos.  The  two  vortices 
of  the  Greek  literature  are  now  separated  ;  the  chrono- 
logical loci  of  their  centres  are  settled.  And  next,  we 
request  the  reader  thoughtfully  to  consider  who  they 
are  of  whom  the  elder  system  is  composed. 

In  the  centre,  as  we  have  already  explained,  is  Peri- 
cles —  the  great  practical  statesman ;  and  that  oratoi 
of  whom  (amongst  so  many  that  vibrated  thunderbolts) 
it  was  said  peculiarly  that  he  thundered  and  lightened 
as  if  he  held  this  Jovian  attribute  by  some  indi^•idual 
title.  We  spare  you  Milton's  magnificent  description 
from  the  Paradise  Regained  of  such  an  orator  '  wield- 
ing at  will  that  fierce  democracy,'  partly  because  the 
closing  line  in  its  reference  '  to  Macedon  and  Artaxer- 
xes'  thi'one,'  too  much  points  the  homage  to  Demos- 
thenes ;  but  still  more,  because  by  too  trivial  a  repeti- 
tion of  splendid  passages,  a  serious  injury  is  done  to 
great  poets.  Passages  of  great  musical  eflfect,  metrical 
bravuras  are  absolutely  vulgarized  by  too  perpetual  a 
parroting  —  and  the  care  of  Augustus  Caesar  ne  noinen 
suum  obsoleJieret,^ih.Sit  the  majesty  of  his  name  should 
not  be  vulgarized  by  bad  poets,  is  more  seriously 
needed  in  our  days  on  behalf  of  great  poets,  to  protect 
them  from  trivial  or  too  parrot-like  a  citation. 

Passing  onwards  from  Pericles,  you  find  that  all  the 
rest  in  his  system  were  men  in  the  highest  sense  cre- 
tive  ;  absolutely  setting  the  very  first  examples,  each 
in  his  peculiar  walk  of  composition  ;  themselves  with- 
out pre\ious  models,  and  yet  destined  every  man  of 


^8  STYLE. 

them  to  become  models  for  aL  after-generations  ^ 
themselves  without  fathers  or  mothers,  and  yet  having 
all  posterity  for  their  children.  Jrirst  come  the  three 
men  divini  spiritus,  under  a  heavenly  afflatus,  ^schy- 
lus  —  Sophocles  —  Euripides,  the  creators  of  Tragedy 
out  of  a  village  mummery.  Next  comes  Aristophanes, 
who  breathed  the  breath  of  life  into  Comedy.  Then 
comes  the  great  philosopher  Anaxagoras,  who  first 
theorized  successfully  upon  man  and  the  world.  Next 
come,  whether  great  or  not,  the  still  more  famous  phi- 
losophers —  Socrates,  Plato,  Xenophon.  Then  comes, 
leaning  upon  Pericles,  as  sometimes  Pericles  leaned 
upon  him,  the  divine  artist,  Phidias  ;  ^^  and  behind  this 
immortal  man  walk  Herodotus  and  Thucydides.  What 
a  procession  to  Eleusis  would  these  men  have  formed ; 
what  a  frieze,  if  some  great  artist  could  arrange  it  as 
dramatically  as  Chaucer  has  arranged  the  Pilgrimage 
to  Canterbury.    1 

It  will  be  gTfmted  that  this  is  unmasking  a  pretty 
strong  battery  of  great  guns  for  the  Athens  of  Pericles. 
Now,  let  us  step  on  a  hundred  years  forward.  We  are 
now  within  hail  of  Alexander ;  and  a  brilliant  consis- 
tory of  Grecian  men,  that  is,  by  which  he  is  surround- 
ed. There  are  now  exquisite  masters  of  the  more 
refined  Comedy  ;  there  are,  again,  great  philosophers, 
for  all  the  great  schools  are  represented  by  able  suc- 
cessors ;  and  above  all  others,  there  is  the  one  philoso- 
pher who  played  with  men's  minds  (according  to  Lord 
Bacon's  comparison)  as  freely  as  ever  his  princely 
pupil  with  their  persons  —  there  is  Aristotle.  There 
vre  great  orators,  and,  above  all  others,  there  is  that 
orator  whom  succeeding  generations  (wisely  or  not'*- 
oave  adopted  as  the  representative  name  for  what  if 


STYLE  269 

conceivable  in  oratorial  perfection  —  there  is  Demos- 
thenes. Aristotle  and  Demosthenes  are  in  themselves 
bulwarks  of  power  ;  many  hosts  lie  in  those  two  names. 
For  artists,  again,  to  range  against  Phidias,  there  is 
Lysippus  the  sculptor,  and  there  is  Apelles  the  painter. 
For  great  captains  and  masters  of  strategic  art,  there  is 
Alexander  himself,  with  a  glittering  cortege  of  general 
officers,  well  qualified  to  wear  the  crowns  which  they 
will  win,  and  to  head  the  dynasties  which  they  will 
found.  Historians  there  are  now,  as  in  that  former 
age.  And,  upon  the  whole,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
the  '  turn-out '  is  showy  and  imposing. 

Before  coming  to  that  point,  that  is,  before  compar- 
ing the  second  '  deposit '  (geologically  speaking)  of 
Grecian  genius  with  the  first,  let  us  consider  what  it 
was  (if  anything)  that  connected  them.  Here,  reader, 
we  would  wish  to  put  a  question.  Saving  your  pres- 
ence. Did  you  ever  see  what  is  called  a  dumb-bell  ? 
"We  have  ;  and  know  it  by  more  painful  evidence  than 
that  of  sight. 

You,  therefore,  oh  reader !  if  personally  cognisant 
of  dumb-bells,  we  shall  remind  —  if  not,  we  shall  in- 
form —  that  it  is  a  cylindrical  bar  of  iron,  issuing  at 
each  end  in  a  globe  of  the  same  metal,  and  usually  it 
is  sheathed  in  green  baize  ;  but,  perfidiously  so,  if  that 
covering  is  meant  to  deny  or  to  conceal  the  fact  of 
those  heart-rending  thumps  which  it  inflicts  upon  one's 
too  confiding  fingers  every  third  ictus.  By  the  way, 
we  have  a  vague  remembrance  that  the  late  Mr.  Thur- 
tell  —  the  same  who  was  generally  censured  for  mur- 
dering the  late  Mr.  Weare  —  once  in  a  dark  lobby 
attempted  to  murder  a  friend  by  means  of  a  dumb-bell ; 
m  which  he  showed  his  judgment  —  we  mean  in  his 


270  STYLE. 

choice  of  tools  ;  for  other\vise,  in  attempting  to  murdei 
his  friend,  he  was  to  blame.  Now,  reader,  it  is  under 
this  image  of  the  dumb-bell  we  couch  an  allegory. 
Those  globes  at  each  end,  are  the  two  systems  or 
separate  clusters  of  Greek  literature  ;  and  that  cylinder 
which  connects  them,  is  the  long  man  that  ran  into 
each  system  —  binding  the  two  together.  Who  was 
that  ?  It  was  Isocrates.  Great  we  cannot  call  him  in 
conscience ;  and,  therefore,  by  way  of  compromise, 
we  call  him  long,  which,  in  one  sense,  he  certainly 
was  ;  for  he  lived  through  four-and-twenty  Olympiads, 
each  containing  four  solar  years.  He  narrowly  escaped 
being  a  hundred  years  old  ;  and  though  that  did  not 
carry  him  from  centre  to  centre,  yet,  as  each  system 
might  be  supposed  to  portend  a  radius  each  way  of 
twenty  years,  he  had,  in  fact,  a  full  personal  cogni- 
sance (and  pretty  equally)  of  the  two  systems,  remote 
as  they  were,  which  composed  the  total  world  of  Gre- 
cian genius.  Two  circumstances  have  made  this  man 
interesting  to  all  posterity  ;  so  that  people,  the  most 
'j'^mote  and  different  in  character,  (Cicero,  for  instance, 
ana^Milton,)  have  taken  a  delight  in  his  memory.  One 
is,  tlWt  the  school  of  rhetoric  in  Athens,  which  did  not 
finally  go  down  till  the  reign  of  Justinian,  and,  there- 
fore, lasted  above  nine  hundred  and  forty  years  withou'; 
interruption,  began  with  him.  He  was,  says  Cicero 
De  Oral.,  '  Pater  eloquentiae  ; '  and  elsewhere  he  calls 
him  '  Communis  magister  oratorum.'  True,  he  never 
practised  himself,  for  which  he  had  two  reasons  —  'my 
lungs,'  he  tells  us  himself,  '  are  weak  ; '  and  secondly, 
I  am  naturally,  as  well  as  upon  principle,  a  coward,' 
There  he  was  right.  A  man  would  never  have  seen 
twenty-four  Olympiads  who  had  gone  about  brawling 


STYLE.  2fl 

and  giving  'jaw,'  as  Demostlienes  and  Cicero  did. 
You  see  what  they  made  of  it.  The  other  feature  of 
interest  in  this  long  man  is  precisely  that  fact,  viz.  that 
he  was  long.  Everybody  looks  with  kindness  upon 
the  snowy-headed  man  who  saw  the  young  prince 
Alexander  of  Macedon  -svithin  four  years  of  his  starting 
for  Persia  ;  and  personally  knew  most  of  those  that 
gave  lustre  to  the  levees  of  Pericles.  Accordingly,  it 
is  for  this  quality  of  length  that  Milton  honors  him  with 
a  touching  memorial  ;  for  Isocrates  was  '  that  old  man 
eloquent '  of  Milton's  sonnet,  whom  the  battle  of  Chae- 
ronea, '  fatal  to  liberty,  killed  with  report.'  This  battle, 
by  which  Philip  overthrew  the  last  struggles  of  dying 
independence  in  Greece,  occurred  in  the  year  338  be- 
fore Christ.  Philip  was  himself  assassinated  two  years 
later.  Consequently,  had  Isocrates  pulled  out,  like 
Caoutchouc,  a  little  longer,  he  might  have  seen  the 
silver  shields,  or  Macedonian  life-guards,  embarking 
for  Persia.  In  less  than  five  years  from  that  same 
battle,  '  fatal  to  liberty,'  Alexander  was  taking  fatal 
liberties  with  Persia,  and  tickling  the  catastrophe  of 
Darius.  There  were  just  seventy  good  years  between 
the  two  expeditions  —  the  Persian  anabasis  of  Cyrus 
the  younger,  and  the  Persian  anabasis  of  Alexander ; 
but  Isocrates  knew  personally  many  officers  and  savans^ 
in  both. 

Others,  beside  Cicero  and  Milton,  have  taken  a  deep 
interest  in  Isocrates  ;  and,  for  the  very  circumstance 
we  have  been  noticing,  his  length,  combined  with  the 
accident  of  position  which  made  that  Icrngth  efi"ective 
m  connecting  the  twofold  literature  of  Greece.  Had 
he  been  '  long  '  in  any  other  situation  than  just  in  that 
dreary  desert  between  the  oasis  of  Pericles  and  the 


272  STYLE. 

oasis  of  Alexander,  what  good  would  that  have  done 
us  ?  'A  wounded  snake  '  or  an  Alexandrine  verse 
would  have  been  as  useful.  But  he,  feeling  himself 
wanted,  laid  his  length  down  like  a  railroad,  exactly 
where  he  could  be  useful  —  with  his  positive  pole 
towards  Pericles,  and  his  negative  pole  towards  Alex- 
ander. Even  Gibbon  —  even  the  frosty  Gibbon  — 
condescends  to  be  pleased  with  this  seasonable  appli- 
cation of  his  two  termini :  —  '  Our  sense,'  says  he,  in 
his  40th  chapter,  '  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature  is 
exalted'"'  by  the  simple  recollection,  that  Isocrates  was 
the  companion  of  Plato  and  Xenophon ;  that  he  assisted, 
perhaps  with  the  historian  Thucydides,  at  the  first 
representations  of  the  Oedipus  of  Sophocles  and  the 
Iphigenia  of  Euripides.'  So  far  in  relation  to  the  upper 
terminus  of  the  long  man  ;  next,  with  reference  to  the 
lower  terminus.  Gibbon  goes  on :  —  and  that  hia 
pupils,  ^schines  and  Demosthenes,  contended  for  the 
crown  of  patriotism  in  the  presence  of  Aristotle,  the 
master  of  Theophrastus,  who  taught  at  Athens  with  the 
founders  of  the  Stoic  and  Epicurean  sects.' 

Now  then,  reader,  you  are  arrived  at  that  station 
from  which  you  overlook  the  whole  of  Greek  literature, 
as  a  few  explanations  will  soon  convince  you.  Where 
is  Homer,  where  is  Hesiod  ?  You  ask  —  where  is 
Pindar  ?  Homer  and  Hesiod  lived  a  thousand  years 
B.  C.,  or,  by  the  lowest  computations,  near  nine  hun- 
dred. For  anything  that  we  know,  they  may  have 
lived  with  Tubal  Cain.  At  all  events,  they  belong  to 
ao  power  or  agency  that  set  in  motion  the  age  of  Peri- 
cles, or  that  operated  on  that  age.  Pindar,  again,  was 
a  solitary  emanation  of  some  unknown  influences,  at 
Thebes,  more  than  five  hundred  years  B.  C.     He  may 


STYLE.  273 

be  referred  to  the  same  era  as  Pythagoras.     These  aro 
all  that  caa  bo  cited  before  Pericles. 

Next,  for  the  ages  after  Alexander,  it  is  certain  that 
Greece  Proper  was  so  much  broken  in  spirit  by  the 
loss  of  her  autonomy  dating  from  that  era  —  as  never 
again  to  have  rallied  sufficiently  to  produce  a  single 
man  of  genius ;  not  one  solitary  writer,  who  acted  as  a 
power  upon  the  national  mind.     Callimachus  was  no- 
body, and  not  decidedly  Grecian.     Theocritus,  a  man 
of  real  genius  in  a  limited  way,  is  a  Grecian  in  that 
sense  only  according  to  which  an  Anglo-American  is 
an  Englishman.     Besides  that,  one  swallow  does  not 
make  °a  summer.     Of  any  other  writers,  we  possess 
only  a  few  fragments:    and   of  Anacreon,  who  must 
have  been  a  poet  of   original    power,  from    the  very 
extended  influence  of  his  writings,  we  do  not  certainly 
know  that  we  have  any  remains  at  all.     Of  those  which 
pass  under  his  name,  not  merely  the  anthorship,  but 
the  era  is   very   questionable    indeed.     Plutarch    and 
Lucian,  the  unlearned    reader    must  understand  that 
both  belong  to  post  Christian  ages.     And  for  all  the 
Greek  emigrants  who  may  have  written  histories,  such 
as  we  now  value  for  their  matter  more  than  for  their 
execution,  one  and  all  they  belong  too  much  to  Roman 
nvilization,  that  we   should   ever  think  of  connecting 
hhem  with  native  Greek  literature.^     Polybius  in  the 
days  of  the  second  Scipio,  Dion  Cassius,  and  Appian, 
in  the  acme  of  Roman  civility,  are  no  more  Grecian 
tuthors,  because   they  wrote   in  Greek,  than  the  Em- 
peror Marcus  Antoninus,  or  Julian,  were  other  than 
Uomans,   because,   from    monstrous   coxcombry,   they 
n.hoose  to  write  in  Greek  their  barren  memoranda.     As 
well  might  Gibbon  be  thought  not  an  Englishman,  or 
18 


274  STTIiB. 

Leibnitz  not  a  German  ;  because  the  former,  in  com* 
posing  the  first  draft  of  his  essay  on  literature,  and  the 
latter  in  composing  his  Theodicet,  used  the  French 
language.  The  motive  in  all  these  cases  was  analo- 
gous :  amongst  the  Greek  writers  it  was  the  affectation 
of  reaching  a  particular  body  of  educated  men,  a 
learned  class,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  uninstructed  mul- 
titude. With  the  affectors  of  French,  the  wish  was,  to 
reach  a  particular  body  of  thinkers,  with  whose  feelings 
they  had  a  special  sympathy  from  personal  habituation 
to  their  society,  and  to  whose  prejudices,  literary  or 
philosophic,  they  had  adapted  their  train  of  argument. 
No  :  the  Greek  literature  ends  at  the  point  we  have 
fixed,  viz.,  with  the  era  of  Alexander.  No  power,  no 
heart-subduing  agency,  was  ever  again  incarnated  in 
any  book,  system  of  philosophy,  or  other  model  of 
creative  energy,  growing  upon  Grecian  soil  or  from 
Grecian  roots.  Creation  was  extinct  —  the  volcano 
was  burned  out.  What  books  appeared  at  scattered 
intervals,  during  the  three  centuries  still  remaining 
before  the  Christian  era,  lie  under  a  reproach,  one  and 
all,  which  perhaps  has  not  been  perceived.  From  the 
titles  and  passing  notices  of  their  objects,  or  mode  of 
dealing  with  their  objects,  such  as  we  derive  from 
Cicero  and  many  others,  it  is  evident  that  they  were 
merely  professional  books  ;  text-books  for  lectures 
addressed  to  students,  or  polemic  works  addressed  to 
competitors.  Chairs  of  rhetoric  and  philosophy  had 
now  been  founded  in  Athens.  A  great  university,  the 
resort  of  students  from  all  nations,  was  established,  and, 
in  a  sense  sufficient  to  insure  the  perpetual  successior 
\>f  these  corporate  bodies,  was  endowed.  Books,  there* 
^re,  and  laboring  with  the  same  two  opposite  defects 


STYLE.  475 

»s  are  unjustly  charged  upon  the  schoolmen  of  the 
middle  ages,  viz.,  dulness  from  absolute  monotony,  and 
visionariness  from  the  aerial  texture  of  the  speculations, 
continued  to  be  written  in  discharge  of  professional 
obligations,  or  in  pursuit  of  professional  interest.  The 
siimmum  honum  was  discussed  until  it  had  become  the 
capital  affliction  of  human  patience ;  the  summum  malum 
of  human  life.  Beyond  these  there  was  no  literature  ; 
and  these  products  of  dreaming  indolence,  which  ter- 
minated in  making  the  very  name  of  Greek  philosopher, 
and  Greek  rhetorician,  a  jest  and  a  byword  amongst 
the  manlier  Romans,  no  more  constituted  a  literature 
than  a  succession  of  academic  studies  from  the  pupils  of 
a  royal  institution  can  constitute  a  school  of  fine  arts. 

Here,  therefore,  at  this  era  of  Alexander,  333  B.  C, 
when  every  Greek  patriot  had  reason  to  say  of  his 
native  literature,  '  Venimus  ad  summum  fortuncB '  —  we 
have  seen  the  best  of  our  days  —  we  must  look  for  the 
Greek  ideas  of  style,  and  the  Greek  theories  of  com- 
position, in  the  uttermost  development  that  either  could 
have  received.  In  the  earlier  system  of  Greek  intel- 
lectual strength  —  in  the  era  of  Pericles,  the  powers  of 
style  would  be  most  comprehensively  exercised.  In 
the  second  system,  in  the  era  of  Alexander,  the  light 
of  conscious  recognition  and  direct  examination  would 
be  most  effectually  applied.  The  first  age  furnished 
the  power  —  the  second  furnished  the  science.  The 
first  brought  the  concrete  model  —  the  second  brought 
the  abstracting  skill ;  and  between  them  the  whole 
compass  of  Greek  speculation  upon  this  point  would 
be  brought  to  a  focus.  Such  being  the  state  of  pre- 
paration, what  was  the  result  ? 


276  STYLE. 

PART    IV. 

'  Such  being  the  state  of  preparation,  what  was  the 
result  7  '  These  were  the  words  which  concluded  our 
last  essay.  There  had  been  two  manifestations  of  the 
Grecian  intellect,  revelations  in  two  separate  forms, 
the  first  having  gathered  about  Pericles  in  the  year  444 
B.  C,  the  second  about  Alexander  the  Great  in  333 
B.  C. ;  the  first  being  a  pure  literature  of  creative 
power,  the  second,  in  a  great  measure,  of  reflective 
power  ;  the  first  fitted  to  call  out  the  differences  of 
style,  the  second  to  observe,  classify,  and  discuss  them : 
under  these  circumstances  of  favorable  preparation, 
what  had  been  the  result  ?  Where  style  exists  in 
strong  coloring  as  a  practice  or  art,  we  reasonably 
expect  that  style  should  soon  follow  as  a  theory  —  as 
a  science  explaining  that  art,  tracing  its  varieties,  and 
teaching  its  rules.  To  use  ancient  distinctions,  where 
the  '  rhetorica  utens  '  has  been  cultivated  with  eminent 
success,  (as  in  early  Greece  it  had,)  it  is  but  natural 
to  expect  many  consequent  attempts  at  a  '  rhetorica 
docens.'  And  especially,  it  is  natural  to  do  so  in  a 
case  where  the  theorizing  intellect  had  been  powder- 
fully  awakened.  What,  therefore,  we  ask  again,  had 
been  in  fact  the  result  ? 

We  must  acknowledge  that  it  had  fallen  far  below 
the  reasonable  standard  of  our  expectations.  Greece, 
it  is  true,  produced  a  long  series  of  works  on  rhetoric  ; 
many  of  which,  though  not  easily  met  with,*^  survive 
to  this  day :  and  one  which  stands  first  in  order  of 
time  —  viz.  the  great  work  of  Aristotle  —  is  of  sucL 
distinguished  merit,  that  some  eminent  moderns  have 
not  scrupled  to  rank  it  as  the  very  foremost  legacy,  in 


STYLE.  277 

point  of  psychological  knowledge,  which  Pagan  litera- 
ture has  bequeathed  to  us.  Without  entering  upon  so 
large  a  comparison  as  that,  we  readily  admit  the  com- 
manding talent  which  this  work  displays.  But  it  is 
under  an  equivocal  use  of  the  word  '  rhetoric'  that  the 
Rhetoric  of  Aristotle  could  ever  have  been  classed 
with  books  treating  of  style.  There  is  in  fact  a  com- 
plex distinction  to  which  the  word  rhetoric  is  liable : 
Ist,  it  means  the  rhetor ica  utens,  as  when  we  praise 
the  rhetoric  of  Seneca  or  Sir  Thomas  Browne  ;  not 
meaning  anything  which  they  taught,  but  something 
which  they  practised ;  not  a  doctrine  which  they  deliv- 
ered, but  a  machinery  of  composition  which  they  em- 
ployed. 2dly,  it  means  the  rhetorica  docens,  as  when 
we  praise  the  rhetoric  of  Aristotle  or  Hermogenes  ; 
writers  far  enough  from  being  rhetorical  by  their  own 
Btyle  of  writing,  but  writers  who  professedly  taught 
others  to  be  rhetorical.  3dly,  the  rhetorica  utens  itself 
is  subdix-idcd  into  two  meanings,  so  wide  apart  that 
they  have  very  little  bearing  on  each  other  :  one  being 
applied  to  the  art  of  persuasion,  the  dexterous  use  of 
plausible  topics  for  recommending  any  opinion  what- 
ever to  the  favor  of  an  audience  :  this  is  the  Grecian 
sense  universally ;  the  other  being  applied  to  the  art 
of  composition  —  the  art  of  treating  any  subject  orna- 
mentally, gracefully,  affectingly.  There  is  another 
use  of  the  word  rhetoric  distinct  from  all  these,  and 
hitherto,  we  believe,  not  consciously  noticed  :  of  which 
\t  some  other  time. 

Now,  this  last  subdivision  of  the  word  rhetoric,  viz. 
•  Rhetoric  considered  as  a  practising  art  —  rhetorica 
%tens,^  which  is  the  sense  exclusively  indicated  by  our 
modern  use  of  the  term,  is  not  at  all  concerned  in  the 


278  STYLE. 

rhetoric  of  Aristotle.  It  is  rhetoric  as  a  mode  of  moral 
Buasion,  as  a  technical  system  for  obtaining  a  readi- 
ness in  giving  to  the  false  a  coloring  of  plausibility,  to 
the  doubtful  a  coloring  of  probability,  or  in  giving  to 
the  true,  when  it  happens  to  be  obsciure,  the  benefit  of 
a  convincing  exposition  —  this  it  is  which  Aristotle 
undertakes  to  teach  :  and  not  at  all  the  art  of  ornamen- 
tal composition.  In  fact,  it  is  the  whole  body  of  public 
extempore  speakers  whom  he  addresses,  not  the  body 
of  deliberate  writers  in  any  section  whatever.  And 
therefore,  whilst  conceding  readily  all  the  honor  which 
is  claimed  for  that  great  man's  rhetoric,  by  this  one 
distinction  as  to  what  it  was  that  he  meant  by  rhetoric, 
we  evade  at  once  all  necessity  for  modifying  our  gen- 
eral proposition  ;  viz.  that  style  in  our  modern  sense, 
as  a  theory  of  composition,  as  an  art  of  constructing 
sentences  and  weaving  them  into  coherent  wholes,  was 
not  effectually  cultivated  amongst  the  Greeks.  It  was 
not  so  well  understood,  nor  so  distinctly  contemplated 
in  the  light  of  a  separate  accomplishment,  as  after- 
wards among  the  Romans.  And  we  repeat,  that  this 
result  from  circumstances  prima  facie  so  favorable  to 
the  very  opposite  result,  is  highly  remarkable.  It  is  so 
remarkable,  that  we  shall  beg  permission  to  linger  a 
little  upon  those  features  in  the  Greek  literature,  which 
most  of  all  might  seem  to  have  warranted  our  expect- 
ing from  Greece  the  very  consummation  of  this  deli- 
cate art.  For  these  same  features,  which  would  sepa- 
rately have  justified  that  expectation,  may  happen, 
when  taken  in  combination  with  others,  to  account  for 
its  disappointment. 

There  is,  then,  amongst  the  earliest  phenomena  of  the 
Greek  literature,  and  during  its  very  inaugural  period. 


STYLE.  279 

one  wkich  of  itself  and  singly  furnishes  a  presumption 
lor  expecting  an  exquisite  investigation  of  style.  It 
lies  in  the  fact,  that  two  out  of  the  three  great  tragic 
poets  carried  his  own  characteristic  quality  of  style 
to  a  morbid  excess  ;  to  such  an  excess  as  should  force 
itself,  and  in  fact  did  force  itself,  into  popular  notice. 
Had  these  poets  all  alike  exhibited  that  sustained  and 
equable  tenor  of  tragic  style  which  we  find  in  Sopho- 
cles, it  is  not  probable  that  the  vulgar  attention  would 
have  been  fixed  by  its  character.  Where  a  standard 
of  splendor  is  much  raised,  provided  all  parts  are 
Bimultaneously  raised  on  the  same  uniform  scale,  we 
know  by  repeated  experience  in  many  modes  of  dis- 
play, whether  in  dress,  in  architecture,  in  the  embel- 
lishment of  rooms,  &c.,  that  this  raising  of  the  standard 
is  not  perceived  with  much  vivacity  ;  and  that  the 
feelings  of  the  spectator  are  soon  reconciled  to  altera- 
tions that  are  harmonized.  It  is  always  by  some  want 
of  uniformity,  some  defect  in  following  out  the  scale, 
that  we  become  roused  to  conscious  observation  of 
the  difference  between  tliis  and  our  former  standards. 
We  exaggerate  these  differences  in  such  a  case,  as 
much  as  we  undervalue  them  in  a  case  where  all  is 
symmetrical.  We  might  expect,  therefore,  before- 
hand, that  the  opposite  characteristics  as  to  style  of 
JEschylus  and  Euripides,  would  force  themselves  upon 
the  notice  of  the  Athenian  populace ;  and,  in  fact, 
we  learn  from  the  Greek  scholiasts  on  these  poets, 
that  this  efi'ect  did  really  follow.  These  scholiasts, 
indeed,  belong  to  a  later  age.  But  we  know  by  tra- 
ditions which  they  have  preserved,  and  we  know  from 
A-ristotle  himself,  the  immediate  successor  of  the  great 
^agic  poets,  (indirectlif  we  know  also  from  the  stormy 


280  STYLE. 

ridicule  of  Aristophanes,  who  may  be  viewed  as  con- 
temporary with  those  poets,)  that  -^'Eschylus  was  noto- 
rious to  a  proverb  amongst  the  very  mob,  for  the 
stateliness,  pomp,  and  towering  chai-acter  of  his  dic- 
tion ;  whilst  Euripides  was  equally  notorious,  not 
merely  for  a  diction  in  a  lower  key,  more  household, 
more  natural,  less  elaborate,  but  also  for  cultivating 
such  a  diction  by  study  and  deliberate  preference. 
Having  such  great  models  of  contrasting  style  to 
begin  with,  having  the  attention  converged  upon  these 
differences  by  the  furious  merriment  of  Aristophanes, 
less  than  a  Grecian  wit  would  have  felt  a  challenge 
in  all  this  to  the  investigation  of  style,  as  a  great 
organ  of  difference  between  man  and  man,  between 
poet  and  poet. 

But  there  was  a  more  enduring  reason,  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  Greece  foi  entitling  us  to  expect  from 
her  the  perfect  theory  of  style.  It  lay  in  those  acci- 
dents of  time  and  place  which  obliged  Greece  to  spin 
most  of  her  speculations,  like  a  spider,  out  of  her 
own  bowels.  Now,  for  such  a  kind  of  literature  style 
is,  generally  speaking,  paramount ;  for  a  literature 
less  self-evolved,  style  is  more  liable  to  neglect. 
Modern  nations  have  labored  under  the  very  opposite 
disadvantage.  The  excess  of  external  materials  has 
sometimes  oppressed  their  creative  power,  and  some- 
times their  meditative  power.  The  exuberance  of 
objectwe  knowledge  —  that  knowledge  which  carries 
the  mind  to  materials  existing  out  of  itself,  such  as 
natural  philosophy,  chemistry,  physiology,  astronomy, 
geology,  where  the  mind  of  the  student  goes  for 
little,  and  the  external  object  for  much  —  has  had  the 
effect  of  weaning  men    from    subjective    speculation, 


STYLE.  281 

where  the  mind  is  all  in  all,  and  the  alien  object  next 
to  nothing  ;  and  in  that  degree  has  weaned  them  from 
the  culture  of  style.  Now,  on  the  other  hand,  if  you 
suppose  a  man  in  the  situation  of  Baron  Trenck  at 
Spandau,  or  Spinosa  in  the  situation  of  Robinson 
Crusoe  at  Juan  Fernandez,  or  a  contemplative  monk 
of  the  thirteenth  century  in  his  cell  —  you  will  per- 
ceive that  —  unless  he  were  a  poor  feeble-minded 
creature  like  Cowper's  Bastile  prisoner,  thrown  by 
utter  want  of  energy  upon  counting  the  very  nails 
of  his  dungeon  in  all  permutations  and  combinations 
—  rather  than  quit  the  external  world,  he  must  in  his 
own  defence,  were  it  only  as  a  relief  from  gnawing 
thoughts,  cultivate  some  subjective  science  ;  that  is, 
some  branch  of  knowledge  which,  drawing  everything 
from  the  mind  itself,  is  independent  of  external  re- 
sources. Such  a  science  is  found  in  the  relations  of 
man  to  God,  that  is  in  theology  ;  in  the  determinations 
of  space,  that  is  in  geometry  ;  in  the  relations  of  exist- 
ence or  being  universally  to  the  human  mind,  other- 
wise called  metaphysics  or  ontology  ;  in  the  relations 
of  the  mind  to  itself,  otherwise  called  logic.  Hence  it 
was  that  the  scholastic  philosophy  evolved  itself,  like  a 
vast  spider's  loom,  between  the  years  1100  and  1400 
Men  shut  up  in  solitude  —  with  the  education  often- 
times of  scholars  —  with  a  life  of  leisure  —  but  with 
hardly  any  books,  and  no  means  of  observation  —  were 
absolutely  forced,  if  they  would  avoid  lunacy,  from 
energies  unoccupied  with  any  object,  to  create  an  object 
Dut  of  those  very  energies  :  they  were  driven  by  mere 
pr  jssure  of  solitude,  and  sometimes  of  external  si- 
lence, into  raising  vast  aerial  Jacob's  ladders  of  vapory 
metaphysics,   just   as    endless  as   those   raeteorologic 


282  STYLi 

phenomena  which  technically  bear  that  name — just  as 
Bublime  and  aspiring  in  their  tendency  upwards  —  and 
sometimes  (but  not  always,  wicked  critic!)  just  as 
unsubstantial.  In  this  land  of  the  practical  and  the 
ponderable,  we  so  little  understand  or  value  such  ab- 
stractions, though  once  our  British  schoolmen  took  the 
lead  in  these  subtleties,  that  we  confound  their  very 
natures  and  names.  Most  people  with  us  mean  by 
metaphysics,  what  is  properly  called  psychology.  No^v, 
these  two  are  so  far  from  being  the  same  thing,  that  the 
former  could  be  pursued  (and,  to  say  the  truth,  was, 
in  fact,  under  Aristotle  created)  by  the  monk  in  his 
unfurnished  cell,  where  nothing  ever  entered  but  moon- 
beams. Whereas  psychology  is  but  in  part  a  subjective 
science  ;  in  some  proportion  it  is  also  objective,  depend- 
ing on  multiplied  experience,  or  on  multiplied  records 
of  experience.  Psychology,  therefore,  could  not  have 
been  cultivated  extensively  by  the  schoolmen  ;  and  in 
fact  would  not  have  been  cultivated  at  all,  but  for  the 
precedent  of  Aristotle.  He,  who  laid  the  foundation 
of  their  metaphysics,  which  have  nothing  to  do  with 
man,  had  also  written  a  work  on  man ;  viz.  on  the 
human  soul,  besides  otber  smaller  works  on  particular 
psychological  phenomena  (such  as  dreaming).  Hence, 
through  mere  imitation,  arose  the  short  sketches  of 
psychology  amongst  the  schoolmen.  Else  their  vocation 
say  to  metaphysics,  and  that  vocation  arose  entirely  out 
of  their  circumstances  —  solitude,  scholarship,  and  no 
jooks.  Total  extinction  there  was  for  them  of  all 
objective  materials,  and  therefore,  as  a  consequence 
mevitable,  reliance  on  the  solitary  energies  of  their 
own  minds.  Like  Christabel's  chamber  lamp,  and  the 
»ngels  from  which  it  was  suspended,  all  was  the  inven* 
tion  of  the  unprompted  artist. 


STYLE. 


283 


•  All  made  out  of  the  carver's  brain.' 
Models  he  had  none  before  him,  for  printed  books  were 
yet   sleeping    in  futurity,  and    the    gates   of  a   grand 
asceticism  were   closed  upon   the  world  of  life.     We 
moderns,  indeed,  fancy  that  the  necessities  of  the  Ro- 
mish church  —  the  mere  instincts  of  self-protection  in 
Popery — were  what  offered  the  bounty  on  this  air- woven 
philosophy  ;  and  partly  that  is  true  ;  but  it  iss  most  cer- 
tain that  all  the  bounties  in  this  world  would  have  failed 
to   operate  effectually,  had  they  not  met    with    those 
circumstances  in  the  silent   life  of  monasteries,  which 
favored  the   growth  of  such  a  self-spun   metaphysical 
divinity.     Monastic  life  predisposed  the  restlessness  of 
human  intellect  to  move  in  that  direction.     It  was  one 
of   the    few  directions  compatible  with   solitude    and 
penury  of  books.     It  was  the  only  one  that  opened  an 
avenue  at  once  to  novelty  and  to  freedom  of  thought. 
Now,  then,   precisely  what    the   monastic  life  of   the 
schoolmen  was,  in  relation  to  philosophy,  the  Greece 
of  Pericles  had  been  in  relation  to  literature.     Wha. 
circumstances,   what    training,   or  predisposing    influ- 
ences existed   for   the  monk  in  his  cell ;  the  same  (or 
such  as  were  tantamount)  existed  for  the  Grecian  wit 
in  the  atmosphere  of  Athens.      Three   great  agencies 
were  at  work,  and  unconsciously  moulding  the  efforts 
of  the  earliest  schoolmen  about  th3  opening  of  the  Cru- 
sades, and  of  the  latest,  some  time  after  their  close  ;  — 
three   analogous  agencies,  the  same  in  virtue,  though 
varied  in  circumstances,  gave  impulse  and  guidance  to 
the  men  of  Greece,  from   Pericles,  at  the  opening  of 
Greek  literature,  to  Alexander  of  Macedon,  who  wit- 
uessed  its  second  harvest.     And  these  agencies  were : 
—  1st.  Leisure  in  excess,   with  a  teeming  intellect  •• 


2^4  STYLE. 

the  burden,  under  a  new-born  excitement,  of  Having 
nothing  to  do.  2d.  Scarcity,  without  an  absolute  fam- 
ine, of  books ;  enough  to  awake  the  dormant  cravings, 
but  not  enough  to  gratify  them  without  personal  parti- 
cipation in  the  labors  of  intellectual  creation.  3d.  A 
revolutionary  restlessness,  produced  by  the  recent  es- 
tablishment of  a  new  and  growing  public  interest. 

The  two  first  of  these  agencies,  for  stimulating 
mtellects  already  roused  by  agitating  changes,  are 
Bufficiently  obvious  ;  though  few,  perhaps,  are  aware 
to  what  extent  idleness  prevailed  in  Pagan  Greece, 
and  even  in  Rome,  under  the  system  of  household 
slavery,  and  under  the  bigoted  contempt  of  commerce. 
But,  waiving  that  point,  and,  for  the  moment,  waiving 
also  the  degree  of  scarcity  which  affected  books  at  the 
era  of  Pericles,  we  must  say  one  word  as  to  the  two 
great  analogous  public  interests  which  had  formed 
themselves  separately,  and  with  a  sense  of  revolution- 
ary power,  for  the  Greeks  on  the  one  hand,  and  for 
the  schoolmen  on  the  other.  As  respected  the  Gre- 
cians, and  especially  the  Athenians,  this  excitement 
lay  in  the  sentiment  of  nationality  which  had  been  first 
powerfully  organized  by  the  Persian  war.  Previously 
to  that  war  the  sentiment  no  doubt  smouldered  ob- 
scurely ;  but  the  oriental  invasion  it  was  which  kindled 
it  into  a  torrent  of  flame.  And  it  is  interesting  to 
remark,  that  the  very  same  cause  which  fused  and 
combined  these  scattered  tribes  into  the  unity  of  Hellas 
viz.  their  common  interest  in  making  head  against  an 
awful  invader,  was  also  the  cause  which  most  of  all 
separated  them  into  local  parties  by  individual  rival- 
ship,  and  by  characteristic  services.  The  orroq^ant 
Spartan,    and    with   a    Frerrh-like    self-glnrific».tiQi\, 


STYLE.  285 

boasted  forever  of  his  little  Therraopyloc  Ten  years 
earlier  the  far  sublimer  display  of  Athenian  Marathon, 
to  say  nothing  of  after  services  at  Salamis,  or  else- 
where, had  placed  Attica  at  the  summit  of  the  Greek 
family.  No  matter  whether  selfish  jealousy  would 
allow  that  pre-eminence  to  be  recognized,  doubtless  it 
was  felt.  With  this  civic  pre-eminence  arose  concur- 
rently for  Athens  the  development  of  an  intellectual 
pre-eminence.  On  this  we  need  say  nothing.  But 
even  here,  although  the  pre-eminence  was  too  dazzling 
to  have  been  at  any  time  overlooked,  yet  Nvith  some 
injustice  in  every  age  to  Athens,  her  light  has  been 
recognized,  but  not  what  gave  it  value  —  the  contrast- 
ing darkness  of  all  around  her.  This  did  not  escape 
Paterculus,  whose  understanding  is  always  vigilant. 
'  "We  talk,'  says  he,  '  of  Grecian  eloquence,  or  Grecian 
poetry,  when  we  should  say  Attic :  for  who  has  ever 
heard  of  Theban  orators,  of  Lacedaemonian  artists,  or 
Corinthian  poets  ?  '  ^  ^schylus,  the  first  great  au- 
thor of  Athens,  (for  Herodotus  was  not  Athenian,) 
personally  fought  in  the  Persian  war.  Consequently 
the  two  modes  of  glory  for  Athens  were  almost  of 
simultaneous  emergence.  And  what  we  are  now 
wishing  to  insist  on,  is,  that  precisely  by  and  through 
this  great  unifying  event,  viz.  the  double  inroad  of 
Asia  militant  upon  Greece,  Greece  first  became  gene- 
rally and  reciprocally  known  to  Greece  herself :  that 
Greece  was  then  first  arranged  and  cast,  as  it  were, 
dramatically,  according  to  her  capacities,  services, 
duties ;  that  a  general  consciousness  was  then  difi"used 
of  the  prevailing  relations  in  which  each  political 
family  stood  to  the  rest ;  and  that,  in  the  leading  states, 
•>.very  intellectual  citizen  drew  a  most  agitating  excite- 


286  STYLE. 

tneut  from  the  particular  character  of  glory  which  had 
settled  upon  his  own  tribe,  and  the  particular  station 
which  had  devolved  upon  it  amongst  the  champions  of 
civilization. 

That  was  the  positive  force  acting  upon  Athens. 
Now,  reverting  to  the  monkish  schoolmen,  in  order  to 
complete  the  parallel,  what  was  the  corresponding 
force  acting  upon  them  ?  Leisure,  and  want  ol 
books,  were  accidents  common  to  both  parties  —  to 
the  scholastic  age  and  to  the  age  of  Pericles,  These 
were  the  negative  forces  ;  concurring  with  others  to 
sustain  a  movement  once  begun,  but  incapable  of 
giving  the  original  impulse.  What  was  the  active, 
the  affirmative  force,  which  effected  for  the  scholastic 
monks  that  unity  and  sense  of  common  pvirposes,  which 
had  been  effected  for  the  Greeks  by  the  sudden  de- 
velopment of  a  Grecian  interest  opposed  to  a  Persian 
—  of  a  civilized  interest,  under  sudden  peril,  opposed 
to  the  barbarism  of  the  universal  planet  ? 

What  was  there  for  the  race  of  monkish  schoolmen, 
laboring  through  three  centuries,  in  the  nature  of  a 
known  palpable  interest,  which  could  balance  so  grand 
w  principle  of  union  and  of  effort,  as  this  acknowledged 
guardianship  of  civilization  had  suddenly  unfolded, 
Jike  a  banner,  for  the  Greeks  during  the  infancy  of 
Pericles  ?  *'^  What  could  there  be  of  corresponding 
grandeur  ? 

Beforehand,  this  should  have  seemed  impossible. 
i^ut,  in  reality,  a  far  grander  mode  of  interest  had 
arisen  for  the  schoolmen ;  grander,  because  more  in- 
definite ;  more  indefinite,  because  spiritual.  It  wa« 
this :  —  The  Western  or  Latin  Church  had  slowlj 
developed  her  earthly  power.     As  an  edifice  of  civi 


STYLE.  287 

greatness,  througliout  the  western  world,  she  stood 
erect  and  towering.  In  the  eleventh  century,  beyond 
all  others,  she  had  settled  her  deep  foundations.  The 
work  thus  far  was  complete.  But  blank  civil  power, 
though  indispensable,  was  the  feeblest  of  her  arms ; 
and,  taken  separately,  was  too  frail  to  last,  besides  that 
it  was  liable  to  revolutions.  The  authority  by  which 
chiefly  she  ruled,  had  ruled,  and  hoped  to  rule,  was 
spiritual ;  and  with  the  growing  institutions  of  the  age, 
embodying  so  much  of  future  resistance,  it  was  essen- 
tial that  this  spiritual  influence  should  be  founded  on 
a  subtle  philosophy  —  difficult  to  learn,  difficult  to 
refute ;  as  also  that  many  dogmas  already  established, 
such  as  tradition,  by  way  of  prop  to  infallibility,  should 
receive  a  far  ampler  development.  The  Latin  church, 
we  must  remember,  was  not  yet  that  church  of  Papal 
Rome,  in  the  maturity  of  its  doctrines  and  its  preten- 
sions, which  it  afterwards  became.  And  when  we 
consider  how  vast  a  benefactrix  this  church  had  been 
to  early  Christendom,  when  moulding  and  settling  ita 
foundations,  as  also  in  what  light  she  must  have  ap- 
peared to  her  own  pious  children,  in  centuries  where 
as  yet  only  the  first  local  breezes  of  opposition  had 
begun  to  whisper  amongst  the  Albigenses,  &c.,  we  are 
bound,  in  all  candor,  to  see  that  a  sublimer  interest 
could  not  have  existed  for  any  series  of  philosophers, 
than  the  profound  persuasion,  that  by  marrying  meta- 
physics to  divinity,  two  sciences  even  separately  so 
grand  :  and  by  the  pursuit  of  labyrinthine  truth,  they 
were  building  up  an  edifice  reaching  to  the  heavens  — 

he  great  spiritual  fortress  of  the  Catholic  church. 
Here  let  us  retrace  the  course   of  our  speculations, 

est  the  reader  should  suppose  us  to  be  wandering. 


?88 


STYLE. 


Firsi,  for  the  sake  of  illustrating  more  vividly  the 
influences  which  acted  on  the  Greece  of  Pericles,  we 
bring  forward  another  case  analogously  circumstanced, 
as  moulded  by  the  same  causes  ;  —  1 .  The  same  con- 
dition of  intellect  under  revolutionary  excitement :  2. 
The  same  penury  of  books :  3.  The  same  chilling 
gloom  from  the  absence  of  female  charities  ;  the  con- 
sequent reaction  of  that  oppressive  enmii,  which  Hel- 
vetius  fancied,  amongst  all  human  agencies,  to  be  the 
most  potent  stimulant  for  the  intellect :  4.  The  same 
(though  far  different)  enthusiasm  and  elevation  of 
thought,  from  disinterested  participation  in  forwarding 
a  great  movement  of  the  age  :  for  the  one  side,  involv- 
ing the  glory  of  their  own  brilliant  country,  and  con- 
current with  civilization ;  for  the  other,  co-extensive 
with  all  spiritual  truth  and  all  spiritual  power. 

Next,  we  remark,  that  men  living  permanently 
under  such  influences,  must,  of  mere  necessity,  resort 
to  that  order  of  intellectual  pursuits  which  requires 
little  aid  ah  extra ;  that  order,  in  fact,  which  philosoph- 
ically is  called  '  subjective,'  as  drawing  much  from 
our  own  proper  selves,  or  little  (if  anything)  from 
extraneous  objects. 

And  then,  thirdly,  we  remark,  that  such  pursuits 
are  peculiarly  favorable  to  the  culture  of  style.  In 
fact,  ihey  force  that  culture.  A  man  who  has  abso- 
lute facts  to  communicate  from  some  branch  of  study, 
external  to  himself,  as  physiology,  suppose,  or  anat- 
omy, or  astronomy,  is  careless  of  stvle  ;  or,  at  least, 
\ie  may  be  so,  because  he  is  independent  of  style  ;  for 
what  he  has  to  communicate,  neither  readily  admits, 
nor  much  needs,  any  graces  in  the  mode  of  communi- 
lation ;  the  matter  transcends  and  oppresses  the  man* 


STYLE.  289 

ner.  Tlie  matter  tells  mtliout  any  manner  at  all.  But 
he  who  has  to  treat  a  vague  question,  such  as  Cicero 
calls  a  qucBstio  injijiita,  where  everything  is  to  he 
finished  out  of  his  own  peculiar  feelings,  or  his  own 
way  of  viewing  things,  (in  contradistinction  to  a  qucestio 
injiniti,  where  determinate  data  from  without,  already 
furnish  the  main  materials,)  soon  finds  that  the  manner 
of  treating  it  not  only  transcends  the  matter,  but  very 
often,  and  in  a  very  great  proportion,  is  the  matter. 
In  very  many  subjective  exercises  of  the  mind,  as,  for 
Instance,  in  that  class  of  poetry  which  has  been  for- 
mally designated  by  this  epithet,  (meditative  poetry, 
we  mean,  in  opposition  to  the  Homeric,  which  is  in- 
tensely objective,}  the  problem  before  the  writer  is 
—  to  project  his  o'w^n  inner  mind  ;  to  bring  out  con- 
sciously what  yet  lurks  by  involution  in  many  unan- 
alyzed  feelings  ;  in  short,  to  pass  through  a  prism,  and 
radiate  into  distinct  elements,  what  previously  had 
been  even  to  himself  but  dim  and  confused  ideas, 
intermixed  with  each  other.  Now,  in  such  cases,  the 
skill  with  which  detention  or  conscious  arrest  is  given 
to  the  evanescent,  external  projection  to  what  is  inter- 
nal, outline  to  what  is  fluxionary,  and  body  to  what  is 
vague  —  all  this  depends  entirely  on  the  command 
over  language,  as  the  one  sole  means  of  embodying 
ideas.  I  And,  in  such  cases,  the  style,  or,  in  the  largest 
sensed  manner,  is  confluent  with  the  matter.  But, 
at  all  events,  ^ven  by  those  who  are  most  impatient 
of  any  subtleties,  or  what  they  consider  '  metaphysi- 
cal '  distinctions,  thus  much  must  be  conceded  —  viz. 
that  those  who  rest  upon  external  facts,  tangible  real- 
ities, and  circumstantial  details,  in  short,  generally 
upon  the  objective,  whether  in  a  case  of  narration  oi 
19 


290  STYLE. 

of  argument,  must  forever  be  less  dependent  upon 
Btyle,  than  those  who  have  to  draw  upon  their  ovra 
understandings  and  their  own  peculiar  feelinga.  for 
the  furniture  and  matter  of  their  composition,  i  A 
Bingle  illustration  will  make  this  plain.  It  is  an  old 
remark,  and,  in  fact,  a  subject  of  continual  experience 
that  lawyers  fail  as  public  speakers  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  Even  Erskine,  the  greatest  of  modern  ad 
vocates,  was  nobody  as  a  senator  ;  and  the  '  fluent 
Murray,'  two  generations  before  him,  had  found  his 
fluency  give  way  under  that  mode  of  trial.  But  why  ? 
How  was  it  possible  that  a  man's  fluency  in  one  cham- 
ber of  public  business,  should  thus  suddenly  be  de- 
feated and  confounded  in  another  ?  The  reason  is 
briefly  expressed  in  Cicero's  distinction  between  a 
qucBstio  jinita  and  a  qucBstio  injlnita.  In  the  courts  of 
law,  the  orator  was  furnished  with  a  brief ;  an  abstract 
of  facts  ;  downright  statements  upon  oath ;  circum- 
stances of  presumption  ;  and,  in  short,  a  whole  volume 
of  topics  external  to  his  own  mind.  Sometimes,  it  is 
true,  the  advocate  would  venture  a  little  out  to  sea, 
propria  marti :  in  a  case  of  crim.  con.,  for  instance, 
he  would  attempt  a  little  picture  of  domestic  happiness 
drawn  from  his  own  funds.  But  he  was  emboldened 
to  do  this  from  his  certain  knowledge,  that  in  the  facts 
of  his  brief  he  had  alway?  a  hasty  retreat  in  case  of 
iny  danger  that  he  should  founder.  If  the  little  pic- 
ture prospered,  it  was  well  :  if  not,  if  symptoms  of 
weariness  began  to  arise  in  the  audience,  or  of  hesita- 
tion in  himself,  it  was  but  to  cut  the  matter  short,  and 
ceturn  to  the  terra  firma  of  his  brief,  when  all  again 
was  fluent  motion.  Besides  that  each  separate  transi- 
tion, and"  the  distribution  of  the  general  subject  oflered 


STYLE. 


291 


themselves  spontaneously  in  a  law  case  ;  the  logic  was 
given  as  well  as  the  method.  Generally  speaking,  the 
mere  order  cf  chronology  dictated  the  succession  and 
arrangement  of  the  topics.  Now  on  the  other  hand, 
in  a  House  of  Commons'  oration,  although  sometimes 
there  may  occur  statements  of  facts  and  operose  calcu- 
lations, still  these  are  never  more  than  a  text,  at  the 
very  best,  for  the  political  discussion,  but  often  no 
more  than  a  subsequent  illustration  or  proof  attached 
to  some  one  of  its  heads.  The  main  staple  of  any 
long  speech  must  always  be  some  general  view  of  na- 
tional policy  ;  and,  in  Cicero's  language,  such  a  view 
must  always  be  injinita  —  that  is,  not  determined  ah 
extra,  but  shaped  and  drawn  from  the  funds  of  one's 
own  understanding.  The  facts  are  here  subordinate 
and  ministerial ;  in  the  case  before  a  jury,  the  facts 
are  all  in  all.  The  forensic  orator  satisfies  his  duty,  if 
he  does  but  take  the  facts  exactly  as  they  stand  in  his 
brief,  and  place  them  before  his  audience  in  that  order, 
and  even  (if  he  should  choose  it)  in  those  words.  The 
parliamentary  orator  has  no  opening  for  facts  at  all, 
but  as  he  himself  may  be  able  to  create  such  an  open- 
ing by  some  previous  expositions  of  doctrine  or  opin- 
ion, of  the  probable  or  the  expedient.  The  one  is 
always  creeping  along  shore  —  the  other  is  always  out 
at  sea.  Accordingly,  the  degrees  of  anxiety  which 
severally  affect  the  two  cases,  is  best  brought  to  the 
test  in  this  one  question  — '  What  shall  1  say  next  7  '  — 
an  anxidty  besetting  orators  like  that  which  besets  poor 
men  in  respect  to  their  children's  daily  bread.  —  '  This 
moment  it  is  secured ;  but,  alas !  for  the  next ! '  Now, 
che  judicial  orator  finds  an  instant  relief:  the  very 
'joints  of  the  case  are  numbered  ;  and,  if  he  cannot 


292 


STYLE. 


find  more  to  say  upon  No.  7,  he  has  only  to  pas^s  on, 
and  call  up  No.  8.  Whereas,  the  deliberative  orator, 
in  a  senate  or  a  literary  meeting,  finds  himself  always 
in  this  situation  —  that  having  reached  with  difficulty 
that  topic  which  we  have  supposed  to  be  No.  7,  one  of 
three  cases  uniformly  occurs :  either  he  does  not  per- 
ceive any  No.  8  at  all ;  or,  secondly,  he  sees  a  dis- 
tracting choice  of  No.  8's  —  the  ideas  to  which  he 
irdght  next  pass  are  many,  but  he  does  not  see  whither 
chey  will  lead  him ;  or,  thirdly,  he  sees  a  very  fair  and 
promising  No.  8,  but  cannot  in  any  way  discover,  off- 
hand, how  he  is  to  effect  a  transition  to  this  new  topic. 
He  cannot,  with  the  rapidity  requisite,  modulate  out  of 
the  one  key  into  the  other.  His  anxiety  increases, 
utter  confusion  masters  him,  and  he  breaks  down. 

We  have  made  this  digression  by  way  of  seeking, 
in  a  well  known  case  of  public  life,  an  illustration  of 
the  difference  between  a  subjective  and  an  objective 
exercise  of  the  mind.  It  is  the  sudden  translation 
from  the  one  exercise  to  the  other,  which,  and  which 
only,  accounts  for  the  failure  of  advocates  when  at- 
tempting senatorial  efforts.  Once  used  to  depend  on 
memorials  or  briefs  of  facts,  or  of  evidence  not  self- 
derived,  the  advocate,  like  a  child  in  leading-strings, 
loses  that  command  over  his  own  internal  resources, 
which  otherwise  he  might  have  drawn  from  practice. 
In  fact,  the  advocate,  with  his  brief  lying  before  him, 
is  precisely  in  the  condition  of  a  parliamentary  speak- 
er, who  places  a  written  speech  or  notes  for  a  speech 
in  his  hat.  This  trick  has  sometimes  been  practised  : 
and  the  consternation  which  would  befall  the  orator  in 
the  case  of  such  a  hat-speech  being  sviddenly  blown 
%way,  precisely  realizes  the  situation  of  a  nisi  prim 


STYLE.  293 

orator  when  first  getting  on  his  legs  in  the  Hoiise  of 
Commons.  He  has  swum  mth  bladders  all  his  life : 
suddenly  he  must  swim  without  them. 

This  case  explains  why  it  is,  that  all  subjectivB 
branches  of  study  favor  the  cultivation  of  style.  — 
Whatsoever  is  entirely  independent  of  the  mind,  and 
external  to  it,  is  generally  equal  to  its  own  enuncia- 
tion. I  Ponderable  facts  and  external  realities  are  intel- 
ligible in  almost  any  language  :  they  are  self-explained 
and  self-sustained.  But  the  more  closely  any  exercise 
of  mind  is  connected  with  what  is  internal  and  individ- 
ual in  the  sensibilities,  that  is,  with  what  is  philosoph- 
ically termed  subjective,  precisely  in  that  degree,  and 
the  more  subtly,  does  the  style  or  the  embodying  of 
the  thoughts  cease  to  be  a  mere  separable  ornament, 
and  in  fact  the  more  does  the  manner,  as  ^\i^  expressed 
it  before,  become  confluent  with  the  matter.  In  saying 
this,  we  do  but  vary  the  form  of  what  we  once  heard 
delivered  on  this  subject  by  Mr.  Wordsworth  :  his  re- 
mark was  by  far  the  weightiest  thing  we  ever  heard  on 
the  subject  of  style  ;  and  it  was  this  —  That  it  is  in  the 
highest  degree  unphilosophic  to  call  language  or  dic- 
tion '  the  dress  of  thoughts  ; '  and  what  was  it  then  that 
he  would  substitute?  Why  this  :  he  would  call  it  '  the 
incarnation  of  thoughts.'  Never,  in  one  word,  was 
80  profound  a  truth  conveyed.  Mr.  Wordsworth  was 
thinking,  doubtless,  of  poetry  like  his  own ;  viz.  that 
which  is  eminently  meditative.  And  the  truth  is  ap- 
parent on  consideration :  for,  if  language  were  merely 
ft  dress,  then  you  could  separate  the  two  :  you  could 
la.y  the  thoughts  on  the  left  hand,  the  language  on 
the  right.  But,  generally  speaking,  you  can  no  more 
ieal  thus  with  poetic  thoughts,  than  you  can  with  soul 


£94  STYLE. 

and  body.  The  union  is  too  subtle;  tbe  intertexture 
too  ineffable,  each  co-existing  not  merely  with  the 
other,  but  each  i7i  and  through  the  other.  An  image, 
for  instance,  a  single  word,  often  enters  into  a  thought 
as  a  constituent  part.  In  short,  the  two  elements  are 
not  united  as  a  body  with  a  separable  dress,  but  as  a 
mysterious  incarnation.  And  thus,  in  what  proportion 
the  thoughts  are  subjective,  in  that  same  proportion 
does  their  very  essence  become  identical  with  the 
expression,  and  the  style  become  confluent  with  the 
matter. 

The  Greeks,  by  want  of  books,  philosophical  in- 
struments, and  innumerable  other  aids  to  all  objective 
researches,  being  thrown  more  exclusively  than  we 
upon  their  own  unaided  minds,  cultivated  logic,  ethics, 
metaphysics,  psychology  —  all  thoroughly  subjective 
studies.  The  schoolmen,  in  the  very  same  situation, 
cultivated  precisely  the  same  field  of  knowledge.  The 
Greeks,  indeed,  added  to  their  studies  that  of  geometry  ; 
for  the  inscription  over  the  gate  of  the  Academy  (Let 
no  one  enter  who  is  not  instructed  in  geometry)  suffi- 
ciently argues  that  this  science  must  have  made  some 
progress  in  the  days  of  Pericles,  when  it  could  thus  be 
made  a  general  qualification  for  admission  to  a  learned  - 
establishment  within  thirty  years  after  his  death.  But 
geometry  is  partly  an  objective,  partly  a  subjective 
study.  With  this  exception,  the  Greeks  and  the  mo- 
nastic schoolmen  trode  the  very  same  path. 

Consequently,  in  agreement  with  our  principle,  both 
ought  to  have  found  themselves  in  circumstances 
favorable  to  the  cultivation  of  style.  And  it  is  certain 
that  they  did.  As  an  art,  as  a  practice,  it  was  felici- 
lously  pursued  in  both  cases.     It  is  true  that  the  harsk 


STYLE.  295 

iscetic  mode  of  treating  philosophy  by  the  schoohnen, 
generated  a  corresponding  barrenness,  aridity  and  re- 
pulsiveness,  in  the  rigid  forms  of  their  technical  lan- 
guage. But  however  offensive  to  genial  sensibilities, 
this  diction  was  a  perfect  thing  in  its  kind  ;  and,  to  do 
It  justice,  we  ought  rather  to  compare  it  with  the  exqui- 
site language  of  algebra,  equally  irreconcilable  to  all 
standards  of  aesthetic  beauty  ;  but  yet  for  the  three 
qualities  of  elliptical  rapidity,  (that  rapidity  which  con- 
stitutes what  is  meant  by  elegance  in  mathematics,)  — 
of  absolute  precision  —  and  of  simplicity,  this  algebraic 
language  is  unrivalled  amongst  human  inventions.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  Greeks,  whose  objects  did  not 
confine  them  to  these  austere  studies,  carried  out  their 
corresponding  excellence  in  style  upon  a  far  wider  and 
indeed  a  comprehensive  scale.  Almost  all  modes  of 
style  were  exemplified  amongst  them.  Thus,  we 
endeavor  to  show  that  the  subjective  pursuits  of  the 
Greeks  and  the  schoolmen  ought  to  have  favored  a 
command  of  appropriate  diction ;  and  afterwards  that 
it  did. 

But,  fourthly,  we  are  entitled  to  expect  —  that  wher- 
ever style  exists  in  great  development  as  a  practice,  it 
will  soon  be  investigated  with  corresponding  success 
as  a  theory.  If  fine  music  is  produced  spontaneously 
in  short  snatches  by  the  musical  sensibility  of  a  peo- 
ple, it  is  a  matter  of  certainty  that  a  science  of  com- 
position, that  counterpoint,  that  thorough-bass.  Will 
Boon  be  cultivated  ^vith  a  commensurate  zeal.  This  is 
matter  of  such  obvious  inference,  that  in  any  case 
tvhere  it  fails,  we  look  for  some  extraordinary  cause 
to  account  for  it.  Now,  in  Greece,  with  respect  to 
\tyle,  the  inforence  did  fail.     Style,  as  an  art,  was  in 


296  STYLE. 

a  high  state  of  culture  :  style,  as  a  science,  was  nearly 
neglected.  How  is  this  to  be  accounted  for  ?  It  arose 
naturally  enough  out  of  one  great  phenomenon  in  the 
condition  of  ancient  times,  and  the  relation  whish  that 
bore  to  literature,  and  to  all  human  exertion  of  the 
intellect. 

Did  the  reader  ever  happen  to  reflect  on  the  great 
idea  of  Publication  7  An  idea  we  call  it ;  because, 
even  in  our  own  times,  with  all  the  mechanic  aids  of 
steam-presses,  &c.,  this  object  is  most  imperfectly  ap- 
proached, and  is  destined,  perhaps,  forever  to  remain 
an  unattainable  ideal  ;  useful  (like  all  ideals)  in  the 
way  of  regulating  our  aims,  but  also  as  a  practicable 
object  not  reconcilable  with  the  limitation  of  human 
power.  For  it  is  clear  that,  if  books  were  multiplied 
by  a  thousand-fold,  and  truth  of  all  kinds  were  carried 
to  the  very  fireside  of  every  family,  nay,  placed  below 
the  eyes  of  every  individual,  still  the  purpose  of  any 
universal  publication  would  be  defeated  and  utterly 
confounded,  were  it  only  by  the  limited  opportunities 
of  readers.  One  condition  of  publication  defeats 
another.  Even  so  much  as  a  general  publication  is  a 
hopeless  idea.  Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  publication, 
in  some  degree,  and  by  some  mode,  is  a  siyie  qua  non 
condition  for  the  generation  of  literature.  Without  a 
larger  sympathy  than  that  of  his  own  personal  circle, 
it  is  evident  that  no  writer  could  have  a  motive  for 
those  exertions  and  previous  preparations,  without 
which  excellence  is  not  attainable  in  any  art  whatso- 
ever. 

Now,  in  our  own  times,  it  is  singular,  and  really  phi- 
losophically curious,  to  remark  the  utter  blindness  of 
Writers,   readers,  publishers,  and  all  parties  whatevei 


STYLE.  297 

interested  in  literature,  as  to  the  trivial  fraction  of  pub- 
licity which  settles  upon  each  sepai-ate  work.  The 
very  multiplication  of  books  has  continually  defeated 
the  object  in  a  growing  progression.  Readers  have 
increased,  the  engines  of  publication  have  increased  ; 
but  books,  increasing  in  a  still  greater  proportion,  have 
left  as  the  practical  result  —  an  average  quotient 
of  publicity  for  each  book,  taken  apart,  continually 
decreasing.  And  if  the  whole  world  were  readers, 
probably  the  average  publicity  for  each  separate  work 
would  reach  a  minimum  —  such  would  be  the  concur- 
rent increase  of  books.  But  even  this  view  of  the  case 
keeps  out  of  sight  the  most  monstrous  forms  of  this 
phenomenon.  The  inequality  of  the  publication  has 
the  effect  of  keeping  very  many  books  absolutely  with- 
out a  reader.  The  majority  of  books  are  never  opened  ; 
five  hundred  copies  may  be  printed,  or  half  as  many 
more  ;  of  these,  it  may  happen,  that  five  are  carelessly 
turned  over.  Popular  journals,  again,  which  carry  a 
promiscuous  miscellany  of  papers  into  the  same  num- 
ber of  hands,  as  a  stage-coach  must  convey  all  its  pas- 
sengers at  the  rame  rate  of  speed,  dupe  the  public  with 
a  notion  that  here  at  least  all  are  read.  Not  at  all. 
One  or  two  are  read  from  the  interest  attached  to  their 
subjects.  Occasionally  one  is  read  a  little  from  the 
ability  with  which  it  treats  a  subject  not  otherwise  at- 
tractive. The  rest  have  a  better  chance  certainly  than 
books,  because  they  are  at  any  rate  placed  under  the 
eye  and  in  the  hand  of  readers.  But  this  is  no  more 
than  a  variety  of  the  same  case.  A  hasty  glance  may 
be  taken  by  one  in  a  hundred  at  the  less  attractive 
papers  ;  but  reading  is  out  of  the  question.  Then, 
\gain,  another  delusion,  by  which  all  parties  disguise 


298  STYLE. 

the  truth,  is,  the  absurd  belief  that,  not  "being  read  at 
present,  a  book  may,  however,  be  revived  hereafter. 
Believe  it  not !  This  is  possible  only  with  regard  to 
books  that  demand  to  be  studied,  where  the  merit  is 
slowly  discovered.  Every  month,  every  day  indeed, 
produces  its  own  novelties,  with  the  additional  zest  that 
they  are  novelties.  Every  future  year,  which  will 
assuredly  fail  in  finding  time  for  its  own  books,  how 
should  it  find  time  for  defunct  books  ?  No,  no  — 
every  year  buries  its  own  literature.  Since  Waterloo, 
there  have  been  added  upwards  of  fifty  thousand  books 
and  pamphlets  to  the  shelves  of  our  native  literature, 
taking  no  account  of  foreign  importations.  Of  these 
fifty  thousand,  possibly  two  hundred  still  survive  ;  pos- 
sibly twenty  will  survive  for  a  couple  of  centuries  ; 
possibly  five  or  six  thousand  may  have  been  indiffer- 
ently read  :  the  rest  not  so  much  as  opened.  In  this 
hasty  sketch  of  a  calculation,  we  assume  a  single  copy 
to  represent  a  whole  edition.  But  in  order  to  have  the 
total  sum  of  copies  numerically  neglected  since  Water- 
loo, it  will  be  requisite  to  multiply  forty-four  thousand 
by  five  hundred  at  the  least,  but  probably  by  a  higher 
multiplier.  At  the  very  moment  of  writing  this  —  by 
way  of  putting  into  a  brighter  light  the  inconceivable 
blunder  as  to  publicity  habitually  committed  by  sensi- 
ble men  of  the  world  —  let  us  mention  what  we  now 
see  before  us  in  a  public  journal.  Speaking  with 
disapprobation  of  a  just  but  disparaging  expression 
applied  to  the  French  war-mania  by  a  London  morn- 
'jig  paper,  the  writer  has  described  it  as  likely  to 
irritate  the  people  of  France.  O,  genius  of  arithmetic. 
The  offending  London  journal  has  a  circulation  of  four 
ftiousand  copies  daily  —  and  it  is  assumed  that  thirty- 


STYLE.  299 

three  millions,  of  whom  assuredly  not  tweuty-fi'^'' 
mdi%-iduals  will  ever  see  the  English  paper  as  a  visible 
object,  nor  five  ever  read  the  passage  in  question,  are 
to  be  maddened  by  one  word  in  a  colossal  paper  laid 
this  ■  morning  on  a  table  amongst  fifty  others,  and 
to-morrow  morning  pushed  off  that  table  by  fifty  others 
of  more  recent  date.  How  are  such  delusions  possi- 
ble ?  Simply  from  the  pre^ious  delusion,  of  ancient 
standing,  connected  with  printed  characters  :  Avhat  is 
printed  seems  to  every  man  invested  with  some  fatal 
character  of  publicity  such  as  cannot  belong  to  mere 
MS. ;  whilst  in  the  meantime,  out  of  every  thousand 
printed  pages,  one  at  the  most,  but  at  all  events  a  very 
small  proportion  indeed,  is  in  any  true  sense  more 
public  when  printed  than  previously  as  a  manuscript ; 
and  that  one,  even  that  thousandth  part,  perishes  as 
effectually  in  a  few  days  to  each  separate  reader,  as 
the  words  perish  in  our  daily  conversation.  Out  of  all 
that  we  talk,  or  hear  others  talk,  through  the  course  of 
a  year,  how  much  remains  on  the  memory  at  the 
closing  day  of  December  ?  Quite  as  little,  we  may  be 
sure,  survives  from  most  people's  reading.  A  book 
answers  its  purpose  by  sustaining  the  intellectual 
faculties  in  motion  through  the  current  act  of  reading ; 
and  a  general  deposition  or  settling  takes  effect  from 
the  sum  of  what  we  read  ;  even  that,  however,  chiefly 
according  to  the  pre\-ious  condition  in  which  the  book 
finds  lis  for  understanding  it,  and  referring  them  to 
heads  under  some  existing  arrangement  of  our  know- 
edge.  Publication  is  an  idle  term  applied  to  what  is 
not  published  :  and  nothing  is  published  wkich  is  not 
made  known  puhlicly  to  the  understanding  as  well  as 
»  the  eye  :  whereas,  for  the  enormous  majority  of 


800  STYLE. 

what  is  printed,  we  cannot  say  so  much  as  that  it  iB 
made  known  to  the  eyes. 

For  what  reason  have  we  insisted  on  this  unpleasant 
view  of  a  phenomenon  incident  to  the  limitation  of 
our  faculties,  and  apparently  without  remedy  ?  Upon 
another  occasion  it  might  have  been  useful  to  do  so, 
were  it  only  to  impress  upon  every  writer  the  vast 
importance  of  compression.  Simply  to  retrench  one 
word  from  each  sentence,  one  superfluous  epithet,  for 
example,  would  probably  increase  the  disposable  time 
of  the  public  by  one  twelfth  part ;  in  other  words, 
would  add  another  month  to  the  year,  or  raise  any 
Bum  of  volumes  read  from  eleven  to  twelve  hundred. 
A  mechanic  operation  would  effect  that  change  :  but, 
by  cultivating  a  closer  logic  and  more  severe  habits  of 
thinking,  perhaps  two  sentences  out  of  each  three 
might  be  pruned  away  ;  and  the  amount  of  possible 
publication  might  thus  be  increased  in  a  threefold 
degree.  A  most  serious  duty,  therefore,  and  a  duty 
which  is  annually  growing  in  solemnity,  appears  to  be 
connected  with  the  culture  of  an  unwordy  diction  ; 
much  more,  however,  with  the  culture  of  clear  think- 
ing ;  that  being  the  main  key  to  good  writing,  and 
consequently  to  fluent  reading. 

But  all  this,  though  not  unconnected  with  our  general 
theme,  is  wide  of  our  immediate  purpose.  The  course 
of  our  logic  at  this  point  runs  in  the  following  order. 
The  Athenians,  from  causes  assigned,  ought  to  have 
consummated  the  whole  science  and  theory  of  style. 
But  they  did  not.  Why  ?  Simply  from  a  remarkable 
deflection  or  bias  given  to  their  studies  by  a  difficulty 
connected  with  publication.  For  some  modes  of 
tterature  the  Greeks  had  a  means  of  publication,  for 


STYLE.  301 

many  they  had  not.  That  one  difference,  as  we  shall 
show,  disturbed  the  just  valuation  of  style. 

Some  mode  of  publication  must  have  existed  for 
Athens,  that  is  evident.  Th.  -yxerc  fact  of  a  literature 
proves  it.  For  without  public  sympathy  how  can  a 
literatiure  arise  ?  or  public  sympathy  without  a  regular 
organ  of  publication  ?  What  poet  would  submit  to  the 
labors  of  his  most  difficult  art,  if  he  .tad  no  reasonable 
prospect  of  a  large  audience,  and  son,^ewhat  of  a  per- 
manent audience  to  welcome  and  adopt  his  produc- 
tions ? 

Now  then,  in  the  Athens  of  Pericles,  what  was  the 
audience,  how  composed,  and  how  ensured,  on  which 
the  literary  composer  might  rely  ?  By  what  channel, 
in  short,  did  the  Athenian  writer  calculate  on  a  publi- 
cation 7 

This  is  a  very  interesting  question  ;  and,  as  regards 
much  in  the  civilization  of  Greece,  both  for  what  it 
caused  and  what  it  prevented,  is  an  important  question. 
In  the  elder  days,  in  fact  we  may  suppose  through  the 
five  hundred  years  from  the  Trojan  expedition  to 
Pisistratus  and  Solon,  all  publication  was  effected 
through  two  classes  of  men  —  the  public  reciters  and 
the  public  singers.  Thus  no  doubt  it  was,  that  the 
Iliad  and  Odyssey  were  sent  down  to  the  hands  of 
Pisistratus,  who  has  the  traditional  reputation  of  having 
fi.rst  arranged  and  revised  these  poems.  These  reciters 
or  singers  to  the  harp,  woidd  probably  rehearse  one 
entire  book  of  the  Iliad  at  every  splendid  banquet. 
Every  book  would  be  kept  in  remembrance  and  cur- 
rency by  the  peculiar  local  relations  of  particular  states 
V  particular  families  to  ancestors  connected  with  Troy. 
This  mode  of  publication,  however,  had  the  disadvan- 


302  STYLE. 

tage,  that  it  was  among  tTie  arts  ministerial  to  sensual 
enjoyment.  And  it  is  some  argument  for  the  exten- 
sive diffusion  of  such  a  practice  in  the  earlj-  times  of 
Greece,  that  both  in  ''  -  Greece  of  later  times,  and, 
by  adoption  from  '9^^^  in  the  Rome  of  cultivated 
ages,  we  find  the  axqoafiara  as  commonly  established 
by  way  of  a  dinner  appurtenance  —  that  is,  exercises 
of  display  addressed  to  the  ear,  recitations  of  any 
kind  with  and  without  music  —  not  at  all  less  fre- 
quently than  oQcifiaTa,  or  the  corresponding  display  to 
the  eye,  (dances  or  combats  of  gladiators.)  These 
were  doubtless  inheritances  from  the  ancient  usages  of 
Greece,  modes  of  publication  resorted  to  long  before 
the  Olympic  games,  by  the  mere  necessitous  cravings 
for  sympathy  ;  and  kept  up  long  after  that  institution, 
as  in  itself  too  brief  and  rare  in  its  recurrence  to  satisfy 
the  necessity. 

Such  was  the  earliest  effort  of  publication,  and  in  its 
feeble  infancy  ;  for  this,  besides  its  limitation  in  point 
of  audience,  was  confined  to  narrative  poetry.  But 
when  the  ideal  of  Greece  was  more  and  more  exalted 
by  nearer  comparison  with  barbarous  standards,  after 
the  sentiment  of  patriotism  had  coalesced  with  vin- 
dictive sentiments,  and  when  towering  cities  began  to 
reflect  the  grandeur  of  this  land  as  in  a  visual  mirror, 
these  cravings  for  publicity  became  more  restless  and 
irrepressible.  And  at  length  in  the  time  of  Pericles, 
concurrently  with  the  external  magnificence  of  the 
city,  arose  for  Athens  two  modes  of  publication,  each 
upon  a  scale  of  gigantic  magnitude. 

What  were  these  ?  The  Theatre  and  the  Agora  or 
Forum  ;  publication  by  the  Stage,  and  publication  by 
the  Hustings.     These  were   the  extraordinary  modes 


8TTLB .  303 

of   publication  winch   arose    for   Athens ;    one    by  a 
sudden  birth,  like  that  of  Minerva,  in  the  very  genera- 
tion of  Pericles  ;  the  other  slowly  matuiing  itself  from 
the  generation  of  Pisistratus,  which  preceded  that  of 
Pericles  by  a  hundred  years.     This  double  publication, 
scenic  and  forensic,  was  virtually,  and  for  all  the  loftier 
purposes   of  publication,   the  press   of  Athens.     And 
however   imperfect  a  representative   this   may  seem  of 
a  typographical  publication,  certain  it  is  that  in  some 
important  features  the  Athenian  publication  had  sepa- 
rate advantages  of  its  own.     It  was  a  far  more  effec- 
tive and  correct  publication,  in  the  first  place  ;  enjoying 
every   aid    of    enforcing    accompaniment,   from    voice, 
gesture,  scenery,  music  ;  and  suffering  in  no  instance 
from  false  reading  or  careless  reading.     Then  secondly, 
it  was  a  far  wider  publication  ;   each  drama  being  read 
(or  heard,  which  is  a  far  better  thing)  by  twenty-five 
or  thirty  thousand  persons,  counterbalancing  at  leas . 
forty  editions,  such  as  we  on  an  average  publish,  eacli 
oration  being  delivered  with  just  emphasis,  to  perhaps 
seven  thousand.     But  why,  in  this  mention  of  a  stage 
or  hustings  publication,  as  opposed  to  a  publication  by 
the  printing-press,  why  was  it,  we  are  naturally  ad- 
monished to  ask,  that  the  Greeks  had  no  press  ?     The 
ready  answer  will  be,  because  the  art  of  printing  had 
no;  been  discovered.     But  that  is  an  error,  the  detec- 
tion of  which  we   owe  to  the  present  Archbishop  of 
Dublin.     The  art  of  printing  was  discovered.     It  had 
been  discovered  repeatedly.     The  art  which  multiplied 
the  legends  upon  a  coin  or  medal,  (a  work  which  the 
ftncients  performed  by  many  degrees  better  than  we 
moderns,  for  we  make  it  a  mechanic   art,  they  &  fine 
art,)  naa  in  effect  anticipated  the  art  of  printing.    It  was 


304  STTIiE. 

an  art,  this  typographic  mystery,  which  awoke  and  went 
back  to  sleep  many  times  over,  from  mere  defect  of 
materials.  Not  the  defect  of  typography  us  an  art,  hut 
the  defect  oi  paper  as  a  material  for  keeping  this  art  in 
motion  —  there  lay  the  reason,  as  Dr.  Whately  most 
truly  observes,  why  printed  books  had  no  existence 
amongst  the  Greeks  of  Pericles,  or  afterwards  amongst 
the  llomans  of  Cicero.  And  why  was  there  no  paper  ? 
The  common  reason  applying  to  both  countries  was 
the  want  of  linen  rags  ;  and  that  want  arose  from  the 
universal  habit  of  wearing  woollen  garments.  In  this 
respect,  Athens  and  Rome  were  on  the  same  level. 
But  for  Athens,  the  want  was  driven  to  a  further  ex- 
tremity  by  the  slenderness  of  her  commerce  with 
Egypt,  whence  only  any  substitute  could  have  been 
drawn. 

Even  for  Rome  itself,  the  scarcity  of  paper  ran 
through  many  degrees.  Horace,  the  poet,  was  amused 
with  the  town  of  Equotuticum  for  two  reasons  ;  as 
incapable  of  entering  into  hexameter  verse,  from  its 
prosodial  quantity,  {yersu  quod  dicere  non  est,)  and 
because  it  purchased  water,  (vcenit  vilissima  rerum 
aqua :)  a  circumstance  in  which  it  agrees  with  the  well 
known  Clifton,  above  the  hot  Avells  of  Bristol,  where 
water  is  bought  by  the  shilling's  worth.  But  neither 
Horatian  Equotuticum,  nor  Bristolian  Clifton,  can  ever 
have  been  as  '  hard  up  '  for  water  as  the  Mecca  cara- 
van. And  the  differences  were  as  great,  in  respect  to 
the  want  of  paper,  between  the  Athens  of  Pericles  or 
Alexander,  and  the  Rome  of  Augustus  Caesar.  Athens 
had  bad  poets,  whose  names  have  come  down  to 
modern  times  :  but  Athens  could  no  more  have  afforded 
to  punish  bad  authors  by  sending  their  works  to  gro- 
wers — 


STYLE.  305 

'    in  Yicum  vendentem  pus  et  odores, 

Et  piper,  et  quicquid  chartis  anicilur  ineptis,* 

than  London,  because  gorged  with  the  v/ealth  of  two 
Indies,  can  afford  to  pave  her  streets  with  silver.  This 
practice  of  applying  unsaleable  authors  to  the  ignoull 
uses  of  retail  dealers  in  petty  articles,  must  have 
existed  in  Rome  for  some  time  before  it  could  have 
attracted  the  notice  of  Horace,  and  upon  some  consid- 
erable scale  as  a  known  public  usage,  before  it  could 
have  roused  any  echoes  of  public  mirth  as  a  satiric 
allusion,  or  have  had  any  meaning  and  sting. 

In  that  one  revelation  of  Horace,  we  see  a  proof 
how  much  paper  had  become  more  plentiful.  It  is 
true,  that  so  long  as  men  dressed  in  woollen  materials, 
it  was  impossible  to  look  for  a  cheap  paper.  Maga 
might  have  been  printed  at  Rome  very  well  for  ten 
guineas  a  copy.  Paper  was  dear,  undoubtedly  ;  but 
it  could  be  had.  On  the  other  hand,  how  desperate 
must  have  been  the  bankruptcy  at  Athens  in  all  mate- 
rials for  receiving  the  record  of  thoughts,  when  we 
find  a  polished  people  having  no  better  tickets  or  cards 
for  conveying  their  sentiments  to  the  public  than  shells  ? 
Thence  came  the  very  name  for  civil  banishment,  viz. 
ostracism,  because  the  votes  were  marked  on  an  ostra- 
con,  or  marine  shell.  Again,  in  another  great  and 
most  splendid  city,  you  see  men  reduced  to  petaUsm, 
01  marking  their  votes  by  the  petals  of  shrubs.  Else- 
where, as  indeed  many  centuries  nearer  to  our  own 
times,  in  Constantinople,  bull's  hide  was  used  for  the 
same  purpose. 

Well  might  the  poor  Greeks  adopt  the  desperate  ex- 
pedient of  white  plastered  walls  as  the  best  memoran- 
dum-book for  a  man  who  had  thoughts  occurring  to 
20 


STYLE. 

him  in  the  night-time.  Brass  only,  oi  marole,  could 
offer  any  lasting  memorial  for  thoughts  ;  and  upon 
what  material  the  parts  wore  written  out  for  the  actors 
on  the  Athenian  stage,  or  how  the  elaborate  revisala 
of  the  text  could  be  carried  on,  is  beyond  our  power 
of  conjecture. 

In  this  appalling  state  of  embarrassment  for  the 
great  poet  or  prose  writer,  what  consequences  would 
naturally  arise  ?  A  king's  favorite  and  friend  like 
Aristotle  might  command  the  most  costly  materials. 
For  instance,  if  you  look  back  from  this  day  to  1800, 
into  the  advertising  records  or  catalogues  of  great  Pa- 
risian publishers,  you  will  find  more  works  of  exces- 
si'-'e  luxury,  costing  from  a  thousand  francs  for  each 
copy,  all  the  way  up  to  as  many  guineas,  in  each  sep- 
arate period  of  fifteen  years,  than  in  the  whole  forty 
among  the  wealthier  and  more  enterprising  publishers 
of  Great  Britain.  What  is  the  explanation  ?  Can  the 
very  moderate  incomes  of  the  French  gentry  afford  to 
patronize  works  which  are  beyond  the  purses  of  our 
British  aristocracy,  who,  besides,  are  so  much  more  of 
a  reading  class  ?  Not  so  :  the  patronage  for  these 
Parisian  works  of  luxury  is  not  domestic,  it  is  exotic  : 
chiefly  from  emperors  and  kings  ;  from  great  national 
libraries  ;  from  rich  universities  ;  from  the  grandees 
of  Russia,  Hungary,  or  Great  Britain  ;  and  generally 
from  those  who,  living  in  splendid  castles  or  hotels, 
require  corresponding  furniture,  and  therefore  corres- 
ponding books ;  because  to  such  people  books  are 
necessarily  furniture ;  since  upon  the  principles  of 
good  taste,  they  must  correspond  with  the  splendor  of 
all  around  them.  And  in  the  age  of  Alexander,  there 
were  already  purchasers  enough  among  royal  houses. 


STYLE.  807 

or  the  imitators  of  such  houses,  to  encourage  costly 
copies  of  attractive  works,  Aristotle  was  a  privileged 
man.  But  in  other  less  favored  cases,  the  strong 
yearnings  for  public  sympathy  were  met  by  blank 
impossibilities.  Much  martyrdom,  we  feel  assured, 
was  then  suffered  by  poets.  Thousands,  it  is  true, 
perish  in  our  days,  who  have  never  had  a  solitary 
reader.  But  still,  the  existence  in  print  gives  a  delu- 
sive feeling  that  they  have  been  read.  They  are 
standing  in  the  market  all  day,  and  somebody,  unper- 
ceived  by  themselves,  may  have  thrown  an  eye  upon 
their  wares.  The  thing  is  possible.  But  for  the  an- 
cient writer  there  was  a  sheer  physical  impossibility 
that  any  man  should  sympathize  with  what  he  never 
could  have  seen,  except  under  the  two  conditions  we 
have  mentioned. 

These  two  cases  there  were  of  exemption  from  this 
dire  physical  resistance  ;  two  conditions  which  made 
publication  possible  :  and  under  the  horrible  circum- 
stances of  sequestration  for  authors  in  general,  need  it 
be  said,  that  to  benefit  by  either  advantage  was  sought 
\\dth  such  a  zeal  as,  in  effect,  extinguished  all  other 
literature  ?  If  a  man  could  be  a  poet  for  the  stage,  a 
scriptor  scenicus,  in  that  case  he  obtained  a  hearing. 
If  a  man  could  be  admitted  as  an  orator,  as  a  regular 
demagogus,  from  the  popular  bona,  or  hustings,  in  that 
case  he  obtained  a  hearing.  If  his  own  thoughts  were 
a  torment  to  him,  until  they  were  reverberated  from 
the  hearts  and  flashing  eyes  and  clamorous  sympathy 
of  a  midtitude  ;  thus  only  an  outlet  was  provided,  a 
mouth  was  opened,  for  the  volcano  surging  within  his 
brain.  The  vast  theati^e  was  ar  organ  of  publication ; 
the    political    forum    was    an    organ  of  publication 


808  STYLE. 

And  on  this  twofold  arena  a  torch  was  applied  to  that 
inflammable  gas,  which  exhaled  spontaneously  from  so 
excitable  a  mind  as  the  mind  of  the  Athenian. 

Need  we  wonder,  then,  at  the  torrent-like  deter- 
mination with  which  Athenian  literature,  from  the  era 
444  B.  C,  to  the  era  333  B.  C,  ran  headlong  into  one 
or  other  channel  —  the  scenical  poetry  or  the  eloquence 
of  the  hustings  ?  For  an  Athenian  in  search  of  pop- 
ular applause,  or  of  sympathy,  there  was  no  other 
avenue  to  either  ;  unless,  indeed,  in  the  character  of 
an  artist,  or  of  a  leading  soldier:  but  too  often,  in  this 
latter  class,  it  happened  that  mercenary  foreigners  had 
a  preference.  And  thus  it  was,  that  during  that  period 
when  the  popular  cast  of  government  throughout  Greece 
awakened  patriotic  emulation,  scarcely  anything  is 
heard  of  in  literature  (allowing  for  the  succession  tc 
philosophic  chairs,  which  made  it  their  pride  to  be 
private  and  exclusive)  except  dramatic  poetry  on  the 
one  hand,  comic  or  tragic,  and  political  oratory  on  the 
other. 

As  to  this  last  avenue  to  the  public  ear,  how  it  was 
abused,  in  what  excess  it  became  the  nuisance  and 
capital  scourge  of  Athens,  there  needs  only  the  testi- 
mony of  all  contemporary  men  who  happened  to  stand 
aloof  from  that  profession,  or  all  subsequent  men  even 
of  that  very  profession,  who  were  not  blinded  by  some 
corresponding  interest  in  some  similar  system  of  delu- 
sion. Euripides  and  Aristophanes,  contemporary  with 
the  earliest  practitioners  of  name  and  power  on  that 
stage  of  jugglers,  are  overrun  with  expressions  of 
horror  for  these  public  pests.  '  You  have  every  quali- 
fication,' says  Aristophanes  to  an  aspirant,  '  that 
could  be  wished  for  a  public  orator;  (fvvtj  ^laQa  —  a 


STYLE.  ^^^ 

roice  like  seven  devils  —  y.a>fo?  y«yna?— yon  are  by 
uature  a  scamp  —  "yoS"'"?  "  — you  are  up  to  snuff  in  _ 
the  business  of  the  forum.'  From  Euripides  might 
be  gathered  a  small  volume,  relying  merely  upon  so 
much  of  his  works  as  yet  survives,  in  illustration  of 
the  horror  which  possessed  him  for  this  gang  of  public 
tnisleaders  :  — 

Tovt"  to6'  0  SyrjToiv  tv  tto^eis  oixot'^«i«S 
Juftovg  t'  a/ro/AuT'  —  of  xaXoi  Xtar  Xoyoi. 

'  This  is  what  overthrows  cities,   admirably  organ- 
ized, and    the    households   of  men  — your    superfine 
harangues.'     Cicero,  full  four  centuries  later,  looking 
back  to  this  very  period  from  Pericles  to  Alexander, 
friendly  as  he  was  by  the  esprit  de  corps  to  the   order 
of  orators,  and   professionally  biased    to  uphold  the 
civil  uses  of  eloquence  ;   yet,  as  an  honest  man,  cannot 
deny  that  it  was  this  gift  of  oratory,  hideously  abused, 
which  led  to  the  overthrow  of  Athens,  and  the  ruin  of 
Gredan  liberty  :  —  '  Ilia  vetus  Graecia,  qua  quondam 
opibus,  imperio  gloria  floruit,  hoc  uno  malo  concidit  — 
libertate  immoderatd  ac  Ucentid  concionum.'      Quin- 
Ulian,  standing  on  the  very  same  ground  of   profes- 
t'onal  prejudice,  all  in  favor  of  public   orators,  yet  is 
forced  into  the  same  sorrowful  confession.     In  one  of 
the  Declamations  ascribed  to  him,  he  says  —  '  Civitar 
tum  status  scimus  ab  oratoribus   esse  converses  ; '  ana 
in  illustration  he  adds  the  example  of  Athens  :   '  sive 
ill  am   Athen'.ensium   civitatem,  (quondam  late  princi- 
pem,)   intuen  placeat,  accisas   ejus  vires  animadverte- 
mus  vitio  condonantium:      Root  ard  branch,  Athena 
»yas  laid  prostrate  by  her  wicked  radical  orators ;  for 
radical,  in  the  elliptic  phrase  of  modern  politics,  they 


510  STTXE. 

were  almost  to  a  man  ;  and  in  this  featui-e  above  all 
others,  (a  feature  often  scornfully  exposed  by  Euripi- 
des,) those  technically  known  as  ol  Xiyoircc  —  the 
speaking  men,  and  as  ut  ih^uaymyui '^  — the  misleaders 
of  the  mob,  offer  a  most  suitable  ancestry  for  the 
modern  leaders  of  radicalism  —  that  with  their  base, 
fawning  flatteries  of  the  people,  they  mixed  up  the 
venom  of  vipers  against  their  opponents  and  against 
the  aristocracy  of  the  land. 

' y/iu  Xvxantty  or^uutoig  fiayeiQixotg  — 

'  Subtly  to  wheedle  the  people  with  honeyed  words 
dressed  to  its  palate  '  —  this  had  been  the  ironical 
advice  of  the  scoffing  Aristophanes.  That  practice 
made  the  mob  orator  contemptible  to  manly  tastes 
rather  than  hateful.  But  the  sacrifice  of  independence 
—  the  '  pride  which  licks  the  dust '  —  is  the  readiest 
training  for  all  uncharitableness  and  falsehood  towards 
those  who  seem  either  rivals  for  the  same  base  pur- 
poses, or  open  antagonists  for  nobler.  And  accord- 
ingly it  is  remarked  by  Euripides,  that  these  pestilent 
abusers  of  the  popular  confidence  would  bring  a 
mischief  upon  Athens  before  they  had  finished,  equally 
by  their  sycophancies  to  the  mob,  and  by  their  libels 
v ''  foreign  princes.  Hundreds  of  years  afterwards,  a 
Greek  writer,  upon  reviewing  this  most  interesting 
period  of  one  hundred  and  eleven  years,  from  Pericles 
to  Alexander,  sums  up  and  repeats  the  opinion  of  Eu- 
ripides in  this  general  representative  portrait  of  Attic 
oratory,  with  respect  to  which  we  wish  to  ask,  can  any 
better  delineation  be  given  of  a  Chartist,  or  generically 
of  a  modern  Jacobin  ?  —  o  St]iiaywyog  xuxoSiSuaxaXn  rovt 
noXiovg,  ktyfiv  Ttt  y-f^uQiouita  —  'The  mob-leader  dupes 
';he  multitude  with  false  doctrines,  whilst  delivering 


STYLE.  311 

things  soothing  to  their  credulous  vanity.'  This  is  one 
half  of  his  office  —  sychophancy  to  the  immediate  purse- 
holders,  and  poison  to  the  sources  of  truth  —  the  other 
half  is  expressed  with  the  same  spirit  of  prophecy  as 
regards  the  British  future  —  ^a<  9,a^oXixig  avrov?  t^aXXo- 
r^ro.  7ZQ0?  -xovi  antarovi,  '  and  hy  Ij^ng  calumnies  he 
utterly  alienates  their  affections  from  their  own  native 

aristocracy.' 

Now  this  was  a  base  pursuit,  though  somewhat  re- 
lieved by  the  closing  example  of  Demosthenes,  who, 
amidst  much  frailty,  had  a  generous  nature  ;  and  he 
showed  it  chiefly  by  his  death,  and  in  his  lifetime,  to 
use  Milton's  words,  by  uttering  many  times  '  odious 
truth,'  which,  with  noble   courage,  he  compelled  the 
mob  to  hear.     But  one  man  could  not  redeem  a  na- 
tional dishonor.     It  was  such,  and  such  it  was  felt  to 
be.     Men,  therefore,  of  elevated  natures,  and  men  of 
gentle  pacific  natures,  equally  revolted  from  a  trade  of 
lies,  as  regarded  the  audience,  and  of  strife,  as  regard- 
ed  the  competitors.     There  remained   the  one  other 
pursuit  of  scenical  poetry ;   and  it  hardly  needs  to  be 
.;aid,  what  crowding  there  was  amongst  all  the  ener- 
getic minds  of  Athens  into  one  or  other  of  these  pursuits 
_  the  one  for  the  unworldly  and  idealizing,  the  other 
for  the  coarsely  ambitious.     These,  therefore,  became 
the  two  quasi  professions  of  Athens  ;   and  at  the   same 
time,  in  a  sense  more  exclusive  than  can  now  be  true 
of  our  professions,  became  the  sole  means  of  publica- 
tion for  truth  of  any  class,  and  a  publication  by  many 
degrees  more  certain,  more  extensive,  and  more  imme- 
diate, than  ours  by  the  press. 

The  Athenian  theatre  published  an  edition  of  thirty 
thousand  copies  in  one  day,  enabling,  in  effect  every 


312  STYLE. 

male  citizen  capable  of  attending,  from  the  age  of 
twenty  to  sixty,  together  with  many  thousands  of 
domiciled  aliens,  to  read  the  drama,  with  the  fullest 
understanding  of  its  sense  and  poetic  force  that  could 
be  affected  by  natural  powers  of  voice  and  action, 
combined  with  all  possible  auxiliaries  of  art,  of  music, 
of  pantomimic  dancing  ;  and  the  whole  carried  home 
to  the  heart  by  visible  and  audible  sympathy  in  excess. 
This,  but  in  a  very  inferior  form,  as  regarded  the 
adjuncts  of  art,  and  the  scale  of  the  theatre,  and  the 
mise  en  scene,  was  precisely  the  advantage  of  Charles  I. 
for  appreciating  Shakspeare. 

It  was  a  standing  reproach  of  the  Puritans  adopted 
even  by  Milton,  a  leaden  shaft  feathered  and  made 
buoyant  by  his  wit,  that  the  king  had  adopted  that 
stage  poet  as  the  companion  of  his  closet  retirements. 
So  it  would  have  been  a  pity,  if  these  malignant  perse- 
cutors of  the  royal  solitude  should  have  been  liars  as 
well  as  fanatics.  Doubtless,  as  king,  and  in  his  afflic- 
tions, this  storm-vexed  man  did  read  Shakspeare.  But 
that  was  not  the  original  way  in  which  he  acquired  his 
acquaintance  with  the  poet.  A  Prince  of  Wales,  what 
between  public  claims  and  social  claims,  finds  little 
time  for  reading,  after  the  period  of  childhood ;  that  is, 
at  any  period  when  he  can  comprehend  a  great  poet. 
And  it  was  as  Prince  of  Wales  that  Charles  prosecuted 
his  studies  of  Shakspeare.  He  saw  continually  at 
Whitehall,  personated  by  the  best  actors  of  the  time, 
illustrated  by  the  stage  management,  and  assisted  by 
.,he  mechanic  displays  of  Inigo  Jones,  all  the  principal 
iramas  of  Shakspeare  actually  performed.  That  was 
publication  with  an  Athenian  advantage.  A  thousand 
topics  of  a  book  may  be  brought  into  public  libraries, 


STYLE. 


313 


ind  not  one  of  them  opened.  But  the  three  thousand 
copies  of  a  play,  which  Drury  Lane  used  to  publish  in 
one  night,  were  in  the  most  literal  sense  as  well  as  in 
spirit  read,  properly  punctuated  by  the  speakers,  made 
intelligible  by  voice  and  action,  endowed  with  Hfe  and 
cmphiis  :  in  short,  on  each  successive  performance,  a 
very  large  edition  of  a  fine  tragedy  was  published  in 
the  most  impressive  shape  ;  not  merely  with  accuracy, 
but  with  a  mimic  reality  that  forbade  all  forgetting, 
and  was  liable  to  no  inattention. 

Now,  if  Drury  Lane  published  a  drama  for  Shak- 
Bpeare   by   three   thousand  copies   in  one  night,   the 
Athenian  theatre  published  ten  times  that  amount  for 
Sophocles.     And  this  mode  of  publication  in  Athens 
not   co-operating    (as    in   modern    times)   with   other 
modes,  but  standing  out  in  solitary  conspicuous  relief, 
gave  an  unnatural  bounty  upon  that  one  mode  of  poetic 
composition  :  as   the  hustings  did  upon  one  mode  of 
prose  composition.     And  those  two  modes,  being  thus 
cultivated  to  the  utter  exclusion  of  all  others  not  bene- 
fiting by  that  bounty  of  publication,  gave  an  unnatural . 
bias°to  the  national  style  ;  determined,  in  effect,  upon 
too  narrow  a  scale  the  operative  ideal  of  composition 
—  and  finally  made  the  dramatic  artist  and  the  mob 
orator  the  two  sole  intellectual  professions  for  Athens. 
Hence  came  a  great  limitation  of  style  in  practice  : 
and  hence,  for  reasons  connected  with  these  two  modes 
of  composition,  a  general  neglect  of  style  as  a  didactic 
theory. 


RHETORIC/ 


No  art,  cultivated  by  man,  has  suffered  mere  in  the 
revolutions  of  taste  and  opinion  than  the  art  of  rheto- 
ric. There  was  a  time  when,  by  an  undue  extension 
of  this  term,  it  designated  the  whole  cycle  of  accom- 
plishments which  prepared  a  man  for  public  affairs. 
From  that  height  it  has  descended  to  a  level  with  the 
arts  of  alchemy  and  astrology,  as  holding  out  promises 
which  consist  in  a  mixed  degree  of  impostures  and 
of  trifles.  If  we  look  into  the  prevailing  theory  of 
rhetoric,  under  which  it  meets  with  so  degrading  an 
estimate,  we  shall  find  that  it  fluctuates  between  two 
different  conceptions,  according  to  one  of  which  it  is 
an  art  of  ostentatious  ornament,  and  according  to  the 
other  an  art  of  sophistry.  A  man  is  held  to  play  the 
rhetorician,  when  he  treats  a  subject  with  more  than 
usual  gayety  of  ornament ;  and  perhaps  we  may  add, 
fts  an  essential  element  in  the  idea,  with  conscious 
ornament.  This  is  one  view  of  rhetoric ;  and,  under 
ihis,  what  it  accomplishes  is  not  so  much  to  p(!rsuade 
as  to  delight;  not  so  much  to  win  the  assent,  as  to 
stimulate  the  attention,  and  captivate  the  taste.     And 

•  Whately 's  Elements  of  Rhetoric. 


BHETOKIC. 


315 


even  this  purpose  is  attached  to  something  separable 
and  accidental  in  the  manner. 

But  the  other  idea  of  rhetoric  lays  its  foundation  in 
something  essential  to  the  matter.  This  is  that  rheto- 
ric of  which  Milton  spoke,  as  able  '  to  dash  maturest 
counsels,  and  to  make  the  worse  appear  the  better 
reasjn.'  Now  it  is  clear,  that  argument  of  some 
quality  or  other  must  be  taken  as  the  principle  of  this 
rhetoric ;  for  those  must  be  immature  counsels  indeed 
that  could  be  dashed  by  mere  embellishments  of  man- 
ner, or  by  artifices  of  diction  and  arrangement. 

Here  then  we  have  in  popular  use  two  separate 
ideas  of  rhetoric,  one  of  which  is  occupied  with  the 
general  end  of  the  fine  ai'ts ;  that  is  to  say,  intellec- 
tual pleasure.  The  other  applies  itself  more  specifi- 
cally to  a  definite  purpose  of  utility. 

Such  is  the  popular  idea  of  rhetoric,  which  wants 
both  unity  and  precision.  If  we  seek  these  from  the 
formal  teachers  of  rhetoric,  our  embarrassment  is  not 
much  relieved.  All  of  them  agree  that  rhetoric  may 
be  defined  the  art  of  persuasion.  But  if  we  inquire 
what  is  persuasion,  we  find  them  vague  and  indefinite, 
or  even  contradictory.  To  waive  a  thousand  of  others. 
Dr.  Whately,  in  the  work  before  us,  insists  upon  the 
conviction  of  the  understanding  as  '  an  essential  part 
of  persuasion  ; '  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  author  of 
the  Philosophy  of  Rhetoric  is  equally  satisfied  that 
there  is  no  persuasion  without  an  appeal  to  the  pas- 
tions.  Here  are  two  views.  We,  for  our  parts,  have 
a  third,  which  excludes  both :  where  con\dction  begins, 
the  field  of  rhetoric  ends  —  that  is  our  opinion  :  and, 
\s  to  the  passions,  we  contend  that  they  are  not  within 
the  province  of  rhetoric,  but  of  eloquence. 


516  KHETOEIC. 

In  this  view  cf  rhetoric  and  its  functions  we  coincide 
with  Aristotle ;  as  indeed  originally  we  took  it  up  on 
a  suggestion  derived  from  him.  But  as  all  parties 
may  possibly  fancy  a  confirmation  of  their  views  in 
Aristotle,  we  shall  say  a  word  or  two  in  support  of 
our  own  interpretation  of  that  author,  Avhich  will  sur- 
prise our  Oxford  friends.  Our  explanation  involves  a 
very  remarkable  detection,  which  will  tax  many  thou- 
sands of  books  with  error  in  a  particular  point  sup- 
posed to  be  as  well  established  as  the  hills.  We 
question,  indeed,  whether  a  Congreve  rocket,  or  a 
bomb,  descending  upon  the  schools  of  Oxford,  would 
cause  more  consternation  than  the  explosion  of  that 
novelty  which  we  are  going  to  discharge. 

Many  years  ago,  when  studying  the  Aristotelian 
rhetoric  at  Oxford,  it  struck  us  that,  by  whatever 
name  Aristotle  might  describe  the  main  purpose  of 
rhetoric,  practically,  at  least,  in  his  own  treatment  of 
it,  he  threw  the  whole  stress  upon  finding  such  argu- 
ments for  any  given  thesis  as,  without  positively  prov- 
ing or  disproving  it,  gave  it  a  colorable  support.  We 
could  not  persuade  ourselves  that  it  was  by  accident 
that  the  topics,  or  general  heads  of  argument,  were 
never  in  an  absolute  and  unconditional  sense  true  — 
but  contained  so  much  of  plausible  or  colorable  truth 
jts  is  expressed  in  the  original  meaning  of  the  word 
vrobable.  A  ratio  probabilis,  in  the  Latin  use  of  the 
word  probabilis,  is  that  ground  of  assent  —  not  which 
the  understanding  can  solemnly  approve  and  abide 
by  —  but  the  very  opposite  to  this  ;  one  which  it  can 
Bubmit  to  for  a  moment,  and  countenance  as  within 
the  limits  of  the  plausible.''^  That  this  was  the  real 
governing   law  of  Aristotle's   procedure,  it  was   not 


EHETOBIC.  317 

possible  to  doubt :  but  was  it  consciously  known  to 
himself  ?  If  so,  bow  was  it  to  be  reconciled  with  his 
own  formal  account  of  the  office  of  rhetoric,  so  often 
repeated,  that  it  consisted  in  finding  enthymemes? 
What  then  was  an  enthymeme  ? 

Oxford  !  thou  wilt  think  us  mad  to  ask.  Certainly 
we  knew,  what  all  the  world  knows,  tbat  an  enthy- 
meme was  understood  to  be  a  syllogism  of  which  one 
proposition  is  suppressed  —  major,  minor,  or  conclu- 
sion. But  what  possible  relation  had  that  to  rhetoric  ? 
Nature  sufficiently  prompts  all  men  to  that  sort  of 
ellipsis  ;  and  what  impertinence  in  a  teacher  to  build 
his  whole  system  upon  a  solemn  precept  to  do  this  or 
that,  when  the  rack  would  not  have  forced  any  man 
to  do  otherwise !  Besides,  Aristotle  had  represented 
it  as  the  fault  of  former  systems,  that  they  applied 
themselves  exclusively  to  the  treatment  of  the  pas- 
sions —  an  object  foreign  to  the  purpose  of  the 
rhetorician,  who,  in  some  situations,  is  absolutely 
forbidden  by  law  to  use  any  such  arts  :  whereas,  says 
he,  his  true  and  universal  weapon  is  the  enthymeme, 
which  is  open  to  him  everywhere.  Now  what  opposi- 
tion, or  what  relation  of  any  kind,  can  be  imagined 
between  the  system  which  he  rejects  and  the  one  he 
adopts,  if  the  enthymeme  is  to  be  understood  as  it 
isually  has  been  r  The  rhetorician  is  not  to  adlress 
the  passions,  but  —  what  ?  to  mind  that,  in  all  his 
drguments,  he  suppresses  one  of  his  propositions ! 
And  these  follies  are  put  into  the  mouth  of  Aristotle. 

In  this  perplexity  a  learned  Scottish  friend  commu- 
nicated to  us  an  Essay  Df  Facciolati's,  read  publicly 
nbout  a  century  ago,  (Nov.  1724,)  and  entitled  De 
^nthymemate,^  in  which   be   maintains,  that   the   re- 


318  KHETOEIC. 

ceived  idea  of  the  enthymeme  is  a  total  blunder,  and 
triumphantly  restores  the  lost  idea.  '  Nego,'  says  he, 
'  nego  enthymema  esse  syllogismum  mutilum,  ut  vulgo 
dialectici  docent.  Nego,  inquam,  et  pernego  enthy- 
mema enunciatione  una  et  conclusione  constare, 
quamvis    ita  in   scholis   omnibus   finiatur,   et  a  nobis 

ipsis  finitum  sit  aliquando nolentibus  extra  locum 

lites  suscipere.'  I  deny  peremptorily  that  an  enthy- 
meme consists  of  one  premiss  and  the  conclusion : 
although  that  doctrine  has  been  laid  dovm  universally 
in  the  schools,  and  upon  one  occasion  even  by  myself, 
as  unwilling  to  move  the  question  unseasonably. 

Facciolati  is  not  the  least  accurate  of  logicians, 
because  he  happens  to  be  the  most  eleg_ant.  Yet,  we 
apprehend,  that  at  such  innovations/  Smiglecius  will 
Btir  in  his  grave  ;  Keckermannus  wilr^roan  ;  '  Dutch 
Bargersdyk '  Avill  snort :  and  English  Crackenthorpius, 
(who  has  the  honor  to  be  an  ancestor  of  Mr.  Words- 
worth's,) though  buried  for  two  centuries,  will  revisit 
the  glimpses  of  the  moon.  {And  really,  if  the  ques- 
tion were  for  a  name,  HeSfen  forbid  that  we  should 
disturb  the  peace  of  logicians :  they  might  have  leave 
to  say,  as  of  the  Strid  in  Wharfdale, 

•  It  has  borne  that  name  a  thousand  years. 
And  shall  a  thousand  more.' 

But,  whilst  the  name  is  abused,  the  idea  perishes. 
Facciolati  undoubtedly  is  right :  nor  is  he  the  first 
who  has  observed  the  error.  Julius  Pacius,  who 
understood  Aristotle  better  than  any  man  that  ever 
lived,  had  long  before  remarked  it.  The  arguments 
of  Facciolati  we  shall  give  below ;  "'^  it  will  be  suffi- 
cient here  to  state  the  result.     An  enthymeme  difFep 


BHETOBIC  r7l9 

from  a  syllogism,  not  in  the  accident  of  sujipressing 
one  of  its  propositions ;  either  may  do  this,  or  neither ; 
the  difference  is  essential,  and  in  the  nature  of  the 
matter ;  that  of  the  syllogism  being  certain  and  apo- 
deictic  ;  that  of  the  enthymeme  probable,  and  drawn 
from  the  province  of  opinion. 

This  theory  tallies  exactly  -with  our  own  previous 
construction  of  Aristotle's  rhetoric,  and  explains  the 
stress  which  he  had  laid  at  the  outset  upon  enthy- 
memes.  Whatsoever  is  certain,  or  matter  of  fixed 
science,  can  be  no  subject  for  the  rhetorician :  where 
it  is  possible  for  the  understanding  to  be  convinced, 
no  field  is  open  for  rhetorical  persuasion.  Absolute 
certainty,  and  fixed  science,  transcend  and  exclude 
opinion  and  probability.  The  province  of  rhetoric, 
whether  meant  for  an  influence  upon  the  actions,  or 
simply  upon  the  belief,  lies  amongst  that  vast  field  of 
cases  where  there  is  a  pro  and  a  con,  with  the  chance 
of  right  and  wrong,  true  and  false,  distributed  in 
varying  proportions  between  them.  There  is  also  an 
immense  range  of  truths,  where  there  are  no  chances 
at  all  concerned,  but  the  affirmative  and  the  negative 
are  both  true ;  as,  for  example,  the  goodness  of  human 
nature  and  its  wickedness  ;  the  happiness  of  human 
life  and  its  misery ;  the  charms  of  knowledge,  and  its 
hollowness  ;  the  fragility  of  human  prosperity,  in  the 
eye  of  religious  meditation,  and  its  security,  as  esti- 
mated by  worldly  confidence  and  youthful  hope.  In 
all  these  cases  the  rhetorician  exhibits  his  art  by  giving 
an  impulse  to  one  side,  and  by  withdrawing  the  mind 
BO  steadily  from  all  thoughts  or  images  which  support 
the  other,  as  to  leave  it  practically  under  the  posses- 
ion of  this  partial  estimate. 


B20  BHETORIC. 

Upcn  this  theory,  what  relation  to  rhetoric  shall  we 
assign  to  style  and  the  ornamental  arts  of  ccmposi- 
tion  ?  In  some  respect  they  seem  liahle  to  the  same 
objection  as  that  which  Aristotle  has  urged  against 
appeals  to  the  passions ;  both  are  extra-essential,  or 
iLcu  Ts  /loo/jUOToe ;  they  are  subjective  arts,  not  objec- 
tive ;  tnat  is,  they  do  not  affect  the  thing  which  is  to 
be  surveyed,  but  the  eye  of  him  who  is  to  survey. 
Yet,  in  a  feast,  the  epicure  holds  himself  not  more 
obliged  to  the  cook  for  the  venison,  than  to  the  physi- 
cian who  braces  his  stomach  to  enjoy.  And  any  arts, 
vvhich  conciliate  regard  to  the  speaker,  indirectly  pro- 
mote tbe  effect  of  his  arguments.  On  this  account, 
and  because  (under  the  severest  limitation  of  rhetoric) 
they  are  in  many  cases  indispensable  to  the  perfect 
interpretation  of  the  thoughts ;  we  may  admit  arts  of 
style  and  ornamental  composition  as  the  ministerial 
part  of  rhetoric.  But,  with  regard  to  the  passions,  as 
contended  for  by  Dr.  Campbell,  —  it  is  a  sufficient 
answer,  that  they  are  already  preoccupied  by  what  is 
called  Eloquence. 

Mr.  Coleridge,  as  we  have  often  heard,  is  in  the 
habit  of  drawing  the  line  with  much  philosophical 
beauty  between  rhetoric  and  eloquence.  On  this 
topic  we  were  never  so  fortunate  as  to  hear  him  :  but 
if  we  are  here  called  upon  for  a  distinction,  we  shall 
satisfy  our  immediate  purpose  by  a  very  plain  and 
brief  one.  By  Eloquence,  we  understand  the  over- 
flow of  powerful  feelings  upon  occasions  fitted  to 
excite  them.  But  Rhetoric  is  the  art  of  aggrandizing 
and  bringing  out  into  strong  relief,  by  means  of  vari- 
ous and  striking  thoughts,  some  aspect  of  truth  which 
►f  itself  is  supported  by  no  spontaneous  feelings,  and 
therefore  rests  upon  artificial  aids. 


KHETOEIC.  321 

Greece,  as  may  well  be  imagined,  was  the  birth- 
place of  Rhetoric ;  to  which  of  the  Fine  Arts  was  it 
not  ?  and  here,  in  one  sense  of  the  word  Rhetoric,  the 
art  had  its  consummation :  for  the  theory,  or  ars 
docejts,  was  taught  vnth  a  fulness  and  an  accuracy  by 
the  Grecian  masters,  not  afterwards  approached.  In 
particular,  it  was  so.  taught  by  Aristotle,  whose  system, 
we  are  disposed  to  agree  with  Dr.  Whately,  in  pro- 
nouncing the  best,  as  regards  the  primary  purpose  of 
a  teacher  ;  though  otherAvise,  for  elegance,  and  as  a 
practical  model  in  the  art  he  was  expounding,  neither 
Aristotle,  nor  any  less  austere  among  the  Greek  rheto- 
ricians, has  any  pretensions  to  measure  himself  with 
Quintilian.  In  reality,  for  a  triumph  over  the  difficul- 
ties of  the  subject,  and  as  a  lesson  on  the  possibility 
of  imparting  grace  to  the  treatment  of  scholastic 
topics,  naturally  as  intractable  as  that  of  Grammar 
or  Prosody,  there  is  no  such  chef-d' csuvre  to  this  hour 
in  any  literature,  as  the  Institutions  of  Quintilian. 
Laying  this  one  case  out  of  the  comparison,  however, 
the  Greek  superiority  was  indisputable. 

Yet  how  is  it  to  be  explained,  that  with  these  ad- 
vantages on  the  side  of  the  Greek  rhetoric  as  an 
ars  docens,  rhetoric  as  a  practical  art  (the  ars  utens) 
never  made  any  advances  amongst  the  Greeks  to  the 
brilliancy  which  it  attained  in  Rome  ?  Up  to  a 
certain  period,  and  throughout  the  palmy  state  of  the 
Greek  republics,  we  may  account  for  it  thus  :  Rheto- 
ric, in  its  finest  and  most  absolute  burnish,  may  be 
called  an  eloquentia  umbralica  ;  that  is,  it  aims  at  an 
elaborate  form  of  beauty,  which  shrinks  from  the 
trife  of  business,  and  cou.d  neither  arise  nor  make 
'ttself  felt  in  a  tumultuous  assembly.  Certain  features, 
21 


S22  BHETOBIO. 

it  is  well  known,  and  peculiar  styles  of  countenance, 
which  are  impressive  in  a  drawing-ruom,  become 
ineffective  on  a  public  stage.  The  fine  tooling,  and 
delicate,  tracery,  of  the  cabinet  artist  is  lost  upon  a 
building  of  colossal  proportions.  Extemporaneous- 
ness,  again,  a  favorable  circumstance  to  impassioned 
eloquence,  is  death  to  Rhetoric.  Two  characteristics 
indeed  there  were,  of  a  Greek  popular  assembly, 
which  must  have  operated  fatally  on  the  rhetorician  — 
its  fervor,  in  the  first  place,  and,  secondly,  the  coarse- 
ness of  a  real  interest.  All  great  rhetoricians,  in 
selecting  their  subject,  have  shunned  the  determinate 
cases  of  real  life  :  and  even  in  the  single  instance  of  a 
deviation  from  the  rule  —  that  of  the  author  (whoever 
he  be)  of  the  Declamations  attributed  to  Quintilian, 
the  cases  are  shaped  with  so  romantic  a  generality,  and 
so  slightly  circumstantiated,  as  to  allow  him  all  the 
benefit  of  pure  abstractions. 

We  can  readily  understand,  therefore,  why  the 
fervid  oratory  of  the  Athenian  Assemblies,  and  the 
intense  reality  of  its  interest,  should  stifle  the  growth 
of  Rhetoric  :  the  smoke,  tarnish,  and  demoniac  glare 
of  Vesuvius  easily  eclipse  the  pallid  coruscations  of 
the  Aurora  Borealis.  And  in  fact,  amongst  the  greater 
orators  of  Greece,  there  is  not  a  solitary  gleam  of 
rhetoric  :  Isocrates  may  have  a  little,  being  (to  say 
the  truth)  neither  orator  nor  rhetorician  in  any  emi- 
nent sense  ;  Demosthenes  has  none.  But  when  those 
great  thunders  had  subsided,  which  reached  '  to  Mace- 
don,  and  Artaxerxes'  throne,'  when  the  '  fierce  de- 
mocracy '  itself  had  perished,  and  Greece  had  fallen 
mder  the  common  circumstances  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, how  came  it  that  Greek  rhetoric  did  not  blossom 


EHETOHIC. 


823 


conrorrently  vnth  Roman?    Vegetate  it  did:  and  a 
rank   crop   of   weeds    grew  np   under   the   name   of 
Rhetoric,  down  to  the  times  of  the  Emperor  Julian 
and  his  friend  Lihanius,  (both  of  whom,  by  the  way, 
.vere   as  worthless  %vriters  as   have   ever  abused  the 
Greek  language.)      But  this  part  of  Greek  literature 
is  a  desert  with   no    oasis.     The   fact   is,  if  it  were 
required  to  assign  the  two  bodies  of  ^^Titers  who  have 
exhibited  the  human  understanding  in  the  most  abject 
poverty,    and  whose  works  by  no  possibility   emit  a 
casual  scintmation  of  wit,  fancy,  just  thinking,  or  good 
^vritin-,  we  should  certainly  fix  upon  Greek  rhetori- 
cian", "and  Italian  critics.     Amongst  the  whole  mass 
there' is  not  a  page,  that  any  judicious  friend  to  litera- 
ture would  wish  to  reprieve  from  destruction.     And  in 
both  cases  we  apprehend   that  the  possibility   of  so 
much  inanity  is  due  in  part  to  the  quality  of  the  two 
lanc^ua<^es.     The    diffuseness   and   loose   structure   of 
Gre^ek  "style  unfit  it  for  the  closeness,   condensation, 
and  TO  ayx'?r>o<for  of  rhctoric  ;    the  melodious  beauty  of 
the  mere  sounds,  which  both  in  the  Italian  and  m  the 
Greek  are  combined  with  much  majesty,  dwells  upon 
the  ear  so  delightfully,  that  in  no  other  language  is  it 
so   easy  as  in   these    two  to   write   with  little  or    no 
meaning,  and  to  flow  along  through  a  whole  wilderness 
of  inanity,  without   particularly    rousing  the  reader  s 

disgust. 

In  the  literature  of  Rome  it  is  that  we  find  the  true 

El  Dorado  of  rhetoric,  as  we  might  expect  from  the 
sinewy  compactness  of  the  language.  Livy,  and, 
above  all  preceding  writers,  Ovid,  display  the  greatest 
powers  of  rhetoric  in  forms  of  composition,  which 
vere   not   particulariy  adapted   to   favor  that   talent. 


324  SHETORIC. 

ITie  contest   of  Ajax  and  Ulysses,    for   the  arms  of 
Achilles,  in  one  of  the  latter  Books  of  the  Metamor- 
phoses,  is  a  chef-cT cEuvre  of  rhetoric,  considering  its 
metrical  form ;   for  metre,  and  especially  the  flowing 
heroic  hexameter,  is  no  advantage  to  the  rhetorician.*^ 
The  two  Plinys,  Liican,  (though  again  under  the  dis- 
advantage of  verse,)  Petronius  Arbiter,  and  Quintilian, 
but  above  all,  the  Senecas,  (for  a  Spanish  cross  ap- 
pears to  improve  the  quality  of  the  rhetorician,)  have 
left   a   body    of    rhetorical   composition    such   as   no 
modern  nation  has  rivalled.     Even  the  most  brilliant 
of  these    writers,    however,    were     occasionally    sur- 
passed, in  particular  hravuras  of  rhetoric,  by  several 
of  the  Latin  Fathers,  particularly  Tertullian,  Arnobius, 
St.  Austin,  and  a  writer  whose  name  we   cannot  at 
this  moment  recall.     In  fact,  a  little  African  blood 
operated  as  genially  in  this  respect  as   Spanish,  whilst 
an  Asiatic   cross   w^as   inevitably   fatal.     Partly   from 
this  cause,  and  partly  because  they  wrote  in  an  unfa- 
vorable language,  the  Greek  Fathers  are,  one  and  all, 
mere  Birmingham  rhetoricians.     Even  Gregory  Nazi- 
anzen  is  so,  with  submission  to  Messieurs  of  the  Port 
Royal,  and  other  bigoted  critics,  who  have  pronounced 
him  at  the  very  top  of  the  tree  among  the  fine  writers 
of  antiquity.     Undoubtedly,  he  has  a  turgid  style  of 
mouthy    grandiloquence,     (though    often    the     merest 
bombast)  :    but  for  keen  and  polished   rhetoric  he  is 
singularly  unfitted,  by  inflated  habits  of  thinking,  by 
loitering    difi'useness,  and  u  dreadful  trick  of  calling 
names.     The  spirit  of  personal  invective  is  peculiarly 
adverse  to   the  coolness  of  rhetoric.     As   to   Chrysos- 
••.om,  and  Basil,  wdth  less  of  pomp  and  swagger  than 
Rregory,    they   have   not   at  all   more   of    rhetorica. 


BHETOEIC.  325 

burnish  and  compression.  Upon  the  whole,  looking 
back  through  the  dazzling  files  of  the  ancient  rhetori- 
cians, we  are  disposed  to  rank  the  Senecas  and  Ter- 
tullian  as  the  leaders  of  the  band  :  for  St.  Austin,  in 
his  Confessions,  and  wherever  he  becomes  peculiarly 
interesting,  is  apt  to  be  impassioned  and  fervent  in  a 
degree  which  makes  him  break  out  of  the  proper 
pace  of  rhetoric.  He  is  matched  to  trot,  and  is  con- 
tinually breaking  into  a  gallop.  Indeed,  his  Confes- 
sions have  in  parts,  particularly  in  those  which  relate 
to  the  death  of  his  young  fiiend,  and  his  own  frenzy 
of  grief,  all  that  real  passion  which  is  only  imagined 
in  the  Confessions  of  llousseau,  under  a  preconception 
derived  from  his  known  character  and  unhappy  life. 
By  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Justinian,  or  in  the 
century  between  that  time  and  the  era  of  Mahomet, 
(A.  D.  620,)  which  century  we  regard  as  the  common 
crepusculum,  between  ancient  and  modern  history,  all 
rhetoric,  of  every  degree  and  quality,  seems  to  have 
finally  expired. 

In  the  literature  of  modern  Europe,  rhetoric  has 
been  cultivated  with  success.  But  this  remark  applies 
only  with  any  force  to  a  period  which  is  now  long 
past ;  and  it  is  probable,  upon  various  considerations, 
that  such  another  period  will  never  revolve.  The 
rhetorician's  art,  in  its  glory  and  power,  has  silentlj 
faded  away  before  the  stern  tendencies  of  the  age  ; 
and  if,  by  any  peculiarity  of  taste,  or  strong  determi- 
nation of  the  intellect,  a  rhetorician,  en  grand  costume, 
were  again  to  appear  amongst  us,  it  is  certain  that  he 
\\'Ould  have  no  better  welcome  than  a  stare  of  surprise 
Rs  a  posture-maker  or  balancer,  not  more  elevated  in 
the  general  estimate,  but  far  less   amusing,  than  tho 


326  BHETOKIO. 

opera-dancer  or  equestrian  gymnast.  No  —  the  age 
of  Rhetoric,  like  that  of  Chivalry,  is  gone,  and  passed 
amongst  forgotten  things ;  and  the  rhetorician  can 
have  no  more  chance  for  returning,  than  the  rhap- 
Bodist  of  early  Greece,  or  the  Troubadour  of  romance. 
So  multiplied  are  the  modes  of  intellectual  enjoyment 
in  modern  times,  that  the  choice  is  absolutely  dis- 
tracted ;  and  in  a  boundless  theatre  of  pleasures,  to 
be  had  at  little  or  no  cost  of  intellectual  activity,  it 
would  be  marvellous,  indeed,  if  any  considerable  audi- 
ence could  be  found  for  an  exhibition  which  presup- 
poses a  state  of  tense  exertion  on  the  part  both  of 
auditor  and  performer.  To  hang  upon  one's  own 
thoughts  as  an  object  of  conscious  interest,  to  play 
with  them,  to  watch  and  pursue  them  through  a  maze 
of  inversions,  evolutions,  and  harlequin  changes, 
implies  a  condition  of  society  either  like  that  in  the 
monastic  ages,  forced  to  introvert  its  energies  from 
mere  defect  of  books  ;  (whence  arose  the  scholastic 
metaphysics,  admirable  for  its  subtlety,  but  famishing 
the  mind,  whilst  it  sharpened  its  edge  in  one  exclusive 
direction  ;)  or,  if  it  implies  no  absolute  starvation  of 
intellect,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Roman  rhetoric,  which 
arose  upon  a  considerable  (though  not  very  various) 
literature,  it  proclaims  at  least  a  quiescent  state  of  the 
public  mind,  unoccupied  with  daily  novelties,  and  at 
leisure  from  the  agitations  of  eternal  change. 

Growing  out  of  the  same  condition  of  society,  there 
is  another  cause  at  work  which  will  forever  prevent 
Jhe  resurrection  of  rhetoric,  viz.  —  the  necessities  of 
public  business,  its  vast  extent,  complexity,  fulness 
of  detail,  and  consequent  vulgarity,  as  compared  with 
that  of  the  ancients.     The  very  same  cause,  by  tha 


BHETOKIC. 


327 


way,  furnislies  an  answer  to   tlie  question  moved  by 
Hume,    in    one    of    his    Essays,    with    regard    to    the 
declension    of  eloquence   in    our    deliberative    assem- 
blies.    Eloquence,    senatorial    and    forensic,   at   least, 
has   languished   under   the    same    changes   of   society 
which   have   proved  fatal  to   rhetoric.      The   political 
economy    of    the    ancient    republics,   and    their    com- 
merce, were  simple  and  unelaborate  —  the  system  of 
their   public    services,    both    martial    and    civil,    was 
arranged  on  the  most  naked  and   manageable  princi- 
ples Tfor  we  must  not  confound  the  perplexity  in  our 
modern  explanations  of  these  things,  with  a  perplexity 
in   the   things   themselves.     The   foundation  of  these 
differences   was   in   the    differences   of   domestic   life. 
Personal  wants  being  few,  both  from  climate  and  from 
habit,  and,  in  the  great  majority  of  the  citizens,  limited 
almost  to  the  pure  necessities  of  nature  ;  hence  arose, 
for  the  mass  of  the  population,  the  possibility  of  sur- 
rendering themselves,  much  more  than  with  us,  either 
to  the  one  paramount  business  of  the  state  —  war,  or 
to   a  state  of  Indian  idleness.     Rome,  in  particular, 
dui-ing    the    ages    of    her    growing    luxury,   must   be 
regarded  as  a  nation  supported  by  other  nations,  by 
largesses,  in  effect,  that  is  to   say,  by  the  plunder  of 
conquest.     Living,   therefore,   upon    foreign   alms,   or 
upon  corn  purchased  by  the  product  of  tribute  or  of 
spoils,  a  nation  could  readily  dispense  with  that  ex- 
pansive development  of  her  internal  resources,  upon 
which  modern  Europe  has  been  forced  by  the  more 
jqual    distribution    of    power    amongst    the    civilized 

world. 

The  changes  which  have  followed  in  the  functions 
•„f    our  popular  assemblies,   coiTCspond  to  the    great 


S28  EHETOKIC. 

revolution  here  described.  Suppose  yourself  an  an- 
cient Athenian,  at  some  customary  display  of  Athe- 
nian oratory,  what  will  be  the  topics  ?  Peace  or  war, 
vengeance  for  public  wrongs,  or  mercy  1o  prostrate 
submission,  national  honor  and  national  gratitude, 
glory  and  shame,  and  every  aspect  of  open  appeal 
to  the  primal  sensibilities  of  man.  On  the  other 
hand,  enter  an  English  Parliament,  having  the  most 
of  a  popular  character  in  its  constitution  and  practice, 
that  is  anywhere  to  be  found  in  the  Europe  of  this 
day  ;  and  the  subject  of  debate  will  probably  be  a 
road-bill,  a  bill  for  enabling  a  coal-gas  company  to 
assume  certain  privileges  against  a  competitor  in  oil- 
gas  ;  a  bill  for  defranchising  a  corrupt  borough,  or 
perhaps  some  technical  point  of  form  in  the  Exche- 
quer bills'  bill.  So  much  is  the  face  of  public  business 
vulgarized  by  details.  The  same  spirit  of  differences 
extends  to  forensic  eloquence.  Grecian  and  Roman 
pleadings  are  occupied  with  questions  of  elementary 
justice,  large  and  diffusive,  apprehensible  even  to  the 
uninstructed,  and  connecting  themselves  at  every  step 
with  powerful  and  tempestuous  feelings.  In  British 
trials,  on  the  contrary,  the  field  is  foreclosed  against 
any  interest  of  so  elevating  a  nature,  because  the  rights 
and  wrongs  of  the  case  are  almost  inevitably  absorbed 
to  an  unlearned  eye  by  the  technicalities  of  the  law, 
or  by  the  intricacy  of  the  facts. 

But  this  is  not  always  the  case  —  doubtless  not ; 
-ubjects  for  eloquence,  and,  therefore,  eloquence,  will 
sometimes  arise  in  our  senate,  and  our  courts  of  jus- 
tice. And  in  one  respect  our  British  displays  are 
more  advantageously  circumstanced  than  the  ancient, 
being  more  conspicuously  brought  forward  into  effect 
3y  their  contrast  to  the  ordinary  course  of  business. 


■RHETOKIC.  329 

*  Therefore  are  feasts  so  solemn  and  so  rare, 
Since  seldom  coming,  in  the  long  years  set. 
Like  stones  of  worth  they  thinly  placed  are 
Or  captain  jewels  in  the  carcanet.'  * 

But  still  the  objection  of  Hume  remains  unim- 
peached  as  to  the  fact,  that  eloquence  is  a  rarer 
growth  of  modern  than  of  ancient  civil  polity,  even 
in  those  countries  which  have  the  advantage  of  free 
institutions.  The  letter  of  this  objection  is  sustained, 
but  substantially  it  is  disarmed,  so  far  as  its  purpose 
was  to  argue  any  declension  on  the  part  of  Christian 
nations,  by  this  explanation  of  ours,  which  traces  the 
impoverished  condition  of  civil  eloquence  to  the  com- 
plexity of  public  business. 

But  eloquence  in  one  form  or  other  is  immortal, 
and  will  never  perish  so  long  as  there  are  human 
hearts  moving  under  the  agitations  of  hope  and  fear, 
love  and  passionate  hatred.  And,  in  particular  to  us 
of  the  modern  world,  as  an  endless  source  of  indem- 
nification for  what  we  have  lost  in  the  simplicity  of 
our  social  systems,  we  have  received  a  new  dowry  of 
eloquence,  and  that  of  the  highest  order,  in  the  sanc- 
tities of  our  religion  —  a  field  unknown  to  antiquity 
—  for  the  Pagan  religions  did  not  produce  much 
poetry,  and  of  oratory  none  at  all. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  cause,  which,  operating 
upon  eloquence,  has  but  extinguished  it  under  a  single 
direction,  to  rhetoric  has  been  unconditionally  fatal. 
Eloquence  is  not  banished  from  the  public  business  of 
this  country  as  useless,  but  as  difficult,  and  as  not 
spontaneously  arising  from  topics   such   as  generally 

*  Shakspcare,  Sonnet  52 


330  RHETORIC. 

furnish  the  staple  of  debate.  But  rhetoiic,  <f  at- 
tempted on  a  formal  scale,  would  be  sum.narily 
exploded  as  pure  foppery,  and  trifling  with  time. 
Falstaff,  on  the  field  of  battle,  presenting  his  bottle 
of  sack  for  a  pistol,  or  Polonius  with  his  quibbles, 
could  not  appear  a  more  unseasonable  plaisanteur 
than  a  rhetorician  alighting  from  the  clouds  upon  a 
public  assembly  in  Great  Britain,  met  for  the  dispatch 
of  business. 

Under  these  malign  aspects  of  the  modern  structure 
of  society,  a  structure  to  which  the  whole  world  will 
be  moulded  as  it  becomes  civilized,  there  can  be  no 
room  for  any  revival  of  rhetoric  in  public  speaking ; 
and  from  the  same  and  other  causes,  acting  upon  the 
standard  of  public  taste,  quite  as  little  room  in  written 
composition.  In  spite,  however,  of  the  tendencies  to 
this  consummation,  which  have  been  long  maturing, 
it  is  a  fact,  that,  next  after  Rome,  England  is  the 
country  in  which  rhetoric  prospered  most  —  at  a  time 
when  science  was  unborn  as  a  popular  interest,  and 
the  commercial  activities  of  after-times  were  yet 
sleeping  in  their  rudiments.  This  was  in  the  period 
from  the  latter  end  of  the  sixteenth  to  the  middle  of 
the  seventeenth  century ;  and,  though  the  English 
rhetoric  was  less  true  to  its  own  ideal  than  the 
Roman,  and  often  modulated  into  a  higher  key  of 
impassioned  eloquence,  yet,  unquestionably,  in  some 
of  its  qualities,  it  remains  a  monument  of  the  very 
finest  rhetorical  powers. 

Omitting  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  and  omitting  his  friend, 
Lord  Brooke,  (in  whose  prose  there  are  some  bursts 
of  pathetic  eloquence,  as  there  is  of  rhetoric  in  his 
verse,  though  too  often  harsh  and  affectedly  obscure,) 


EHETOEIC.  331 

the  first  very  eminent  rhetorician  in  the  English  litera- 
ture is  Donne.  Dr.  Johnson  inconsiderately  classes 
him  in  company  with  Cowley,  &c.,  under  the  title  of 
Metaphysical  Poets ;  but  Rhetorical  would  have  been 
a  more  accurate  designation.  In  saying  that,  how- 
ever, we  must  remind  our  readers,  that  we  revert  to 
the  original  use  of  the  word  Rhetoric,  as  laying  tlie 
principal  stress  upon  the  management  of  the  thoughts, 
and  only  a  secondary  one  upon  the  ornaments  of 
style.  Few  writers  have  shown  a  more  extraordinary 
compass  of  power  than  Donne ;  for  he  combined 
what  no  other  man  has  ever  done  —  the  last  sublima- 
tion of  dialectical  subtlety  and  address  with  the  most 
impassioned  majesty.  Massy  diamonds  compose  the 
very  substance  of  his  poem  on  the  Metempsychosis, 
thoughts  and  descriptions  which  have  the  fervent  and 
gloomy  sublimity  of  Ezekiel  or  ^schylus,  whilst  a 
diamond  dust  of  rhetorical  brilliances  is  strewed  over 
the  whole  of  his  occasional  verses  and  prose.  No 
criticism  was  ever  more  unhappy  than  that  of  Dr. 
Johnson's,  which  denounces  all  this  artificial  display 
as  so  much  perversion  of  taste.  There  cannot  be  a 
falser  thought  than  this  ;  for,  upon  that  principle,  a 
whole  class  of  compositions  might  be  vicious,  by  con- 
forming to  its  own  ideal.  The  artifice  and  machinery 
of  rhetoric  furnishes  in  its  degree  as  legitimate  a  basis 
for  intellectual  pleasure  as  any  other ;  that  the  pleas- 
sure  is  of  an  inferior  order,  can  no  more  attaint  the 
idea  or  model  of  the  composition,  than  it  can  impeach 
the  excellence  of  an  epigram  that  it  is  not  a  tragedy. 
Every  species  of  composition  is  to  be  tried  by  its  own 
laws ;  and  if  Dr.  Johnson  had  urged  explicitly,  (what 
was  evidently  moving  in  his  thoughts,)  that  a  metrical 


532  HHETORIC. 

Structure,  by  liolding  forth  the  promise  of  poetry, 
defrauds  the  mind  of  its  just  expectations,  —  he  would 
have  said  what  is  notoriously  false.  Metre  is  open  to 
any  form  of  composition,  provided  it  will  aid  the 
expression  of  the  thoughts ;  and  the  only  sound  objec- 
tion to  it  is,  that  it  has  not  done  so.  Weak  criticism, 
indeed,  is  that  which  condemns  a  copy  of  verses 
under  the  ideal  of  poetry,  when  the  mere  substitution 
of  another  name  and  classification  suffices  to  evade 
the  sentence,  and  to  reinstate  the  composition  in  its 
rights  as  rhetoric.  It  may  be  very  true  that  the  age 
of  Donne  gave  too  much  encouragement  to  his  par 
ticular  vein  of  composition ;  that,  however,  argues  no 
depravity  of  taste,  but  a  taste  erring  only  in  being 
too  limited  and  exclusive. 

The  next  writers  of  distinction,  who  came  forward 
as  rhetoricians,  were  Burton  in  his  Anatomy  of  Mel- 
ancholy, and  Milton  in  many  of  his  prose  works. 
They  labor  under  opposite  defects :  Burton  is  too 
quaint,  fantastic,  and  disjointed.  Milton  too  slow, 
solemn,  and  continuous.  In  the  one  we  see  the  flutter 
of  a  parachute  ;  in  the  other  the  stately  and  volu- 
minous gyrations  of  an  ascending  balloon.  Agile 
movement,  and  a  certain  degree  of  fancifulness,  are 
indispensable  to  rhetoric.  But  Burton  is  not  so  much 
fanciful  as  capricious ;  his  motion  is  not  the  motion 
of  freedom,  but  of  lawlessness :  he  does  not  dance, 
but  caper.  Milton,  on  the  other  hand,  polonaises  with 
a  grand  Castilian  air,  in  paces  too  sequacious  and  pro- 
cessional ;  even  in  his  passages  of  merriment,  and  when 
stung  into  a  quicker  motion  by  personal  disdain  for  an 
unworthy  antagonist,  his  thoughts  and  his  imagery  stiD 
appear  to  move  to  the  music  of  the  organ. 


KHETORIC.  333 

In  some  measure  it  is  a  consequence  of  these  pecu- 
Karities,  and  so  far  it  is  the  more  a  duty  to  allow  for 
them,  that  the  rhetoric  of  ISIilton,  though  wanting  in 
animation,  is  unusually  superb  in  its  coloring ;  its 
very  monotony  is  derived  from  the  sublime  unity  of 
the  presiding  impulse ;  and  hence,  it  sometimes 
ascends  into  eloquence  of  the  highest  kind,  and 
sometimes  even  into  the  raptures  of  lyric  poetry. 
The  main  thing,  indeed,  wanting  to  Milton,  was  to 
have  fallen  upon  happier  subj  ects :  for,  with  the 
exception  of  the  '  Areopagitica,'  there  is  not  one  of 
his  prose  works  upon  a  theme  of  universal  interest, 
or  perhaps  fitted  to  be  the  groundwork  of  a  rhetorical 
display. 

But,  as  it  has  happened  to  Milton  sometimes  to  give 
us  poetry  for  rhetoric,  in  one  instance  he  has  unfortu- 
nately given  us  rhetoric  for  poetry  :  this  occurs  in  the 
Paradise  Lost,  where  the  debates  of  the  fallen  angels 
are  carried  on  by  a  degrading  process  of  gladiatorial 
rhetoric.  Nay,  even  the  councils  of  God,  though  not 
debated  to  and  fro,  are,  however,  expounded  rhetori- 
cally. This  is  astonishing;  for  no  one  was  better 
aware  than  Milton*  of  the  distinction  between  the 
discursive  and  intuitive  acts  of  the  mind,  as  appre- 
hended by  the  old  metaphysicians,  and  the  incom- 
oatibility  of  the  former  with  any  but  a  limitary 
.ntellect.  This  indeed  was  familiar  to  all  the  writers 
of  his  day  :  but,  as  old  GifFord  has  shown,  by  a  most 
idle  note  upon  a  passage  in  Massinger,  that  it  is  a 
distinction  which  has  now  perished  (except  indeed  in 
Germany),  —  we  shall  recall  it  to  the  reader's  atten- 

*  See  the  fifth  book  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  and  passages  in  hia 
|>rose  vrritings. 


334  EHETOBIC. 

don.  An  intuition  is  any  knowledge  whatsoever, 
Bensuous  or  intellectual,  which  is  apprehended  imme^ 
diatehj  :  a  notion  on  the  other  hand,  or  product  of  the 
discursive  faculty,  is  any  knowledge  whatsoever  which 
is  apprehended  mediately.  All  reasoning  is  carried 
on  discursively  ;  that  is,  discurrendo,  —  by  running 
about  to  the  right  and  the  left,  laying  the  separate 
notices  together,  and  thence  mediately  deriving  some 
third  apprehension.  Now  this  process,  howcA'er  glori- 
ous a  characteristic  of  the  human  mind  as  distinguish- 
ing it  from  the  brute,  is  degrading  to  any  supra-human 
intelligence,  divine  or  angelic,  by  arguing  limitation. 
God  must  not  proceed  by  steps,  and  the  fi-agmentary 
knowledge  of  accretion  ;  in  which  case,  at  starting 
he  has  all  the  intermediate  notices  as  so  many  bai's 
between  himself  and  the  conclusion  ;  and  even  at  the 
penultimate  or  antepenultimate  act,  he  is  still  short  of 
the  truth.  God  must  see,  he  must  iviuit,  so  to  speak ; 
and  all  truth  must  reach  him  simultaneously,  first  and 
last,  without  succession  of  time,  or  partition  of  acts  ; 
just  as  light,  before  that  theory  had  been  refuted  by 
the  Satellites  of  Jupiter,  was  held  not  to  be  propa- 
g;ated  in  time,  but  to  be  here  and  there  at  one  and 
the  same  indivisible  instant.  Paley,  from  mere  rude- 
ness of  metaphysical  skill,  has  talked  of  the  judgment 
and  the  judiciousness  of  God  :  but  this  is  profaneness, 
and  a  language  unworthily  appli-ed  even  to  an  angelic 
being.  To  judge,  that  is,  to  subsume  one  proposition 
under  another, —  to  be  judicious,  that  is,  to  collate 
)he  means  with  the  end,  are  acts  impossible  in  the 
divine  nature,  and  not  to  be  ascribed,  even  under  the 
license  of  a  figure,  to  any  being  which  transcends  the 
limitations  of  humanity.     Many  other  instances  there 


EHETOKIC.  335 

lire  in  wbicli  Milton  is  taxed  with  having  too  grossly 
sensualized  his  supernatural  agents ;  some  of  which, 
however,  the  necessities  of  the  action  may  excuse  ; 
and  at  the  worst  they  are  readily  submitted  to  as 
having  an  intelligible  purpose  —  that  cf  bringing  so 
mysterious  a  thing  as  a  spiritual  nature  or  agency 
within  the  limits  of  the  representable.  But  the  intel- 
lectual degradation  fixed  on  his  spiritual  beings  by  the 
rhetorical  debates,  is  purely  gratuitous,  neither  result- 
ing from  the  course  of  the  action,  nor  at  all  promoting 
it.  Making  allowances,  however,  for  the  original 
error  in  the  conception,  it  must  be  granted  that  the 
executioi  is  in  the  best  style :  the  mere  logic  of  the 
debate,  indeed,  is  not  better  managed  than  it  would 
have  bren  by  the  House  of  Commons.  But  the 
colors  cf  style  are  grave  and  suitable  to  afflicted 
ingels.  In  the  Paradise  Regained,  this  is  still  more 
conspicuously  true  :  the  oratory  there,  on  the  part  of 
Satan  in  the  Wilderness,  is  no  longer  of  a  rhetorical 
cast,  but  in  the  grandest  style  of  impassioned  elo- 
quence that  can  be  imagined  as  the  fit  expression  for 
the  mo\  ements  of  an  angelic  despair ;  and  in  particular 
the  speech,  on  being  first  challenged  by  our  Saviour, 
beginning, 

♦  'Tis  true,  I  am  that  spirit  unfortunate,' 

16  not  excelled  in  sublimity  by  any  passage  in  the 
poem. 

MiiTon,  hcweVer,  was  not  d^stlrerl  *-o  gather  the 
vpolia  opima  of  English  rhetoric  :  two  contemporaries 
»f  his  own,  and  whose  literary  course  pretty  nearly 
coincided  with  his  own  in  point  of  time,  surmounted 
all  competition,  and  in  that   amphitheatre  became  the 


336  EHETOKIC. 

Protagonistae.  These  were  Jeremy  Taylor  and  Sir 
Thomas  Browne ;  who,  if  not  absolutely  the  foremost 
in  the  accomplishments  of  art,  were,  undoubtedly,  the 
richest,  the  most  dazzling,  and,  with  reference  to  their 
matter,  the  most  captivating  of  all  rhetoricians.  In 
them  first,  and,  perhaps,  (if  we  except  occasional 
passages  in  the  German  John  Paul  Richter,)  in  them 
only,  are  the  two  opposite  forces  of  eloquent  passion 
and  rhetorical  fancy  brought  into  an  exquisite  equi- 
librium, approaching,  receding  —  attracting,  repelling 
—  blending,  separating  —  chasing  and  chased,  as  in 
a  fugue,  and  again  lost  in  a  delightful  interfusion,  so 
as  to  create  a  middle  species  of  composition,  more 
various  and  stimulating  to  the  understanding  than 
pui-e  eloquence,  more  gratifying  to  the  affections  than 
naked  rhetoric.  Under  this  one  circumstance  of  co- 
incidence, in  other  respects  their  minds  were  of  tho 
most  opposite  temperament :  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  deep, 
tranquil,  and  majestic  as  Milton,  silently  premeditat- 
ing, and  '  disclosing  his  golden  couplets,'  as  under 
some  genial  instinct  of  incubation :  Jeremy  Taylor, 
restless,  fervid,  aspiring,  scattering  abroad  a  prodi- 
gality of  life,  not  unfolding  but  creating,  with  the 
energy,  and  the  '  myriad-mindedness,'  of  Shakspeare. 
Where,  but  in  Sir  T.  B.,  shall  one  hope  to  find  music 
so  Miltonic,  an  intonation  of  such  solemn  chords  as 
are  struck  in  the  following  opening  bar  of  a  passage 
in  the   Urn-burial  —  '  Now.   since    these    bones   have 

rested  quietlv  in  ''  ^"  ^  '  .  /'  '  ,  "  °  drums  and 
^    _^.   another, —  to    be  judicious,  that  is,    to  cw^xm-u., 

)he  means  with  the  end,  are   acts    impossible  in   the 

divine  nature,  and  not  to   be  ascribed,  even  under  the 

license  of  a  figure,  to  any  being  which   transcends  the 

limitations  of  humanity.     Many  other  instances  there 


EHETORIO.  337 

nus  of  rhetoric  !  Time  expounded,  not  by  generations 
or  centuries,  but  by  the  vast  periods  of  conquests  and 
dynasties ;  by  cycles  of  Pharaohs  and  Ptolemies, 
Antiochi,  and  Arsacides  !  And  these  vast  successions 
of  time  distinguished  and  figured  by  the  uproars 
which  revolve  at  their  inaugurations  —  by  the  drums 
and  tramplings  rolling  overhead  upon  the  chambers 
of  forgotten  dead  —  the  trepidations  of  time  and 
mortality  vexing,  at  secular  intervals,  the  everlasting 
Sabbaths  of  the  grave  !  Show  us,  oh  pedant,  such 
another  strain  from  the  oratory  of  Greece  or  Rome  ! 
For  it  is  not  an  'Ov  na  tss  iv  MaQa6(uii  Tfdnixorug,  or  any 
such  bravura,  that  will  make  a  fit  antiphony  to  this 
sublime  rapture.  We  will  not,  however,  attempt  a 
descant  upon  the  merits  of  Sir  T.  Browne,  after  the 
admirable  one  by  Mr.  Coleridge :  and  as  to  Jeremy 
Taylor,  we  would  as  readily  undertake  to  put  a  belt 
about  the  ocean  as  to  characterize  him  adequately 
within  the  space  at  our  command.  It  will  please  the 
reader  better  that  he  shoi;ld  characterize  himself, 
however  imperfectly,  by  a  few  specimens  selected 
from  some  of  his  rarest  works ;  a  method  which  will, 
%t  the  same  time,  have  the  collateral  advantage  of 
illustrating  an  important  truth  in  reference  to  this 
florid  or  Corinthian  order  of  rhetoric,  which  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  notice  a  little  further  on  :  — 

'  It  was  observed  by  a  Spanish  confessor,  —  that  in 
persons  nqf^  ^-7— "^;^ag  ^^^  (]  .gtnfessions  which  they 

tpolia  opima  of  English  rhetoric  :  two  contemporariel/^ 
if  his  own,  and  whose  literary  course  pretty  nearly 
coincided  with  his  own  in  point  of  time,  surmounted 
all  competition,  and  in  that   amphitheatre  became  the 


538  EHETOBIC. 

from  their  bed  of  mud,  and  slime  of  Nilus,  start  up 
into  an  equal  and  continual  length,  and  uninterrupted 
but  with  few  knots,  and  are  strong  and  beauteous, 
with  great  distances  and  intervals ;  but,  when  they  are 
grown  to  their  full  length,  they  lessen  into  the  point 
of  a  pyramid,  and  multiply  their  knots  and  joints, 
interrupting  the  fineness  and  smoothness  of  its  body. 
So  are  the  steps  and  declensions  of  him  that  does  not 
grow  in  grace.  At  first,  when  he  springs  up  from  his 
impurity  by  the  waters  of  baptism  and  repentance,  he 
grows  straight  and  strong,  and  suffers  but  few  inter- 
ruptions of  piety  ;  and  his  constant  courses  of  religion 
are  but  rarely  intermitted,  till  they  ascend  up  to  a  full 
age,  or  towards  the  ends  of  their  life  :  then  they  are 
weak,  and  their  devotions  often  intermitted,  and  their 
breaks  are  frequent,  and  they  seek  excuses,  and  labor 
for  dispensations,  and  love  God  and  religion  less  and 
less,  till  their  old  age,  instead  of  a  crown  of  their 
virtue  and  perseverance,  ends  in  levity  and  unprofita- 
ble courses,  light  and  useless  as  the  tufted  feathers 
upon  the  cane,  every  wind  can  play  with  it  and  abuse 
it,  but  no  man  can  make  it  useful.' 

'  If  we  consider  the  price  that  the  Son  of  God  paid 
for  the  redemption  of  a  soul,  we  shall  better  estimate 
of  it,  than  from  the  weak  discourses  of  our  imperfect 
and  unlearned  philosophy.  Not  the  spoil  of  rich 
provinces  —  not  the  estimate  of  kingdoms  —  not  the 
price  of  Cleopatra's  draught,  —  not  anything  that  was 
corruptible  or  perishing ;  for  that,  which  could  not  one 
minute  retard  the  term  of  its  own  natural  dissolution, 
could  not  be  a  price  for  the  redemption  of  one  perish- 
ing soul.     When  God  made  a  soul,  it  was  only  faciof 


KHETOKIC.  S39 

tmus  homincm  ad  imaginem  nostram ;  he  spake  the 
word,  and  it  was  done.  But,  when  man  had  lost  his 
Boul,  which  the  spirit  of  God  had  breathed  into  him, 
it  was  not  so  soon  recovered.  It  is  like  the  resurrec- 
tion, which  hath  troubled  the  faith  of  many,  who  are 
more  apt  to  believe  that  God  made  a  man  from  noth- 
ing, than  that  he  can  return  a  man  from  dust  and 
corruption.  But  for  this  resurrection  of  the  soul,  for 
th3  re-implacing  of  the  Divine  image,  for  the  re- 
entitling  it  to  the  kingdoms  of  grace  and  glory,  God 
did  a  greater  work  than  the  creation  ;  He  was  fain  to 
contract  Divinity  to  a  span ;  to  send  a  person  to  die 
for  us,  who  of  himself  could  not  die,  and  was  con- 
strained to  use  rare  and  mysterious  arts  to  make  him 
capable  of  dying :  He  prepared  a  person  instrumental 
to  his   purpose,   by    sending   his   Son    from   his    own 

bosom, a  person  both  God  and  man,  an  enigma  to 

all  nations  and  to  all  sciences  ;  one  that  ruled  over  all 
the  angels,  that  walked  on  the  pavements  of  heaven, 
whose    feet   were   clothed  with  stars;  whose  under- 
standing is  larger   than  that  infinite  space  which  we 
imagine  in   the  uncircumscribed   distance  beyond  the 
arst°orb  of  heaven  ;  a  person  to  whom  felicity  was  as 
essential  as  life  to  God.     This  was   the  only  person 
that  was  designed  in  the  eternal -decrees,  to  pay  the 
price  of  a  soul  —  less  than  this  person  could  not  do  it. 
Nothing  less  than  an  infinite  excellence  could  satisfy 
for  a  soul  lost  to  infinite  ages ;  who  was  to  bear  the 
load  of  an  infinite  anger  from  the  provocation  of  an 
eternal  God.     And  yet,  if  it  be  possible  that  Infinite 
can  receive  degrees,  this  is  but  one-half  of  the  abyss, 
ind  I  think  the  lesser 


S40  BHEIO&IC. 

'  It  was  a  strange  variety  of  natural  efficacies,  ^hat 
manna  should  corrupt  in  twenty-four  hours,  if  gath- 
ered upon  Wednesday  or  Thui-sday,  and  that  it  should 
last  till  forty-eight  hours,  if  gathered  upon  the  even  of 
the  Sabbath  ;  and  that  it  should  last  many  hundreds  of 
years,  when  placed  in  the  sanctuary  by  the  ministry  of 
the  high-priest.  But  so  it  was  in  the  Jews'  religion ; 
and  manna  pleased  every  palate,  and  it  filled  all  appe- 
tites ;  and  the  same  measure  was  a  different  proportion, 
it  was  much,  and  it  was  little ;  as  if  nature,  that  it 
might  serve  religion,  had  been  taught  some  measures 
of  infinity,  which  is  everywhere  and  nowhere,  filling 
all  things,  and  circumscribed  with  nothing,  measured 
by  one  omer,  and  doing  the  work  of  two  ;  like  the 
crowns  of  kings,  fitting  the  brows  of  Nimrod  and  the 
most  mighty  warrior,  and  yet  not  too  large  for  the 
temples  of  an  infant  prince.' 

'  His  mercies  are  more  than  we  can  tell,  and  they 
are  more  than  we  can  feel :  for  all  the  world,  in  the 
abyss  of  the  Divine  mercies,  is  like  a  man  diving  into 
the  bottom  of  the  sea,  over  whose  head  the  waters  run 
insensibly  and  unperceived,  and  yet  the  w^eight  is  vast, 
and  the  sum  of  them  is  immeasurable  :  and  the  man 
is  not  pressed  with  the  burden,  nor  confounded  with 
numbers  :  and  no  observation  is  able  to  recount,  no 
sense  sufficient  to  perceive,  no  memory  large  enough 
to  retain,  no  understanding  great  enough  to  apprehend 
this  infinity.' 

These  passages  are  not  cited  with  so  vain  a  purpose 
as  that  of  furnishing  a  sea-line  for  measuring  the 
'  Boundless  deeps '  of  Jeremy  Taylor,  but  to  illustrate 


EHETOBIC.  341 

that  one  remarkable  characteristic  of  his  style  — 
which  we  have  already  noticed  —  viz.  the  everlasting 
strife  and  fluctuation  between  his  rhetoric  and  his 
eloquence,  which  maintain  their  alternations  with  a 
force  and  inevitable  recurrence,  like  the  systole  and 
diastole  —  the  contraction  and  expansion  —  of  some 
living  organ.  For  this  characteristic  he  was  indebted 
in  mixed  proportions  to  his  own  peculiar  style  of 
understanding,  and  the  nature  of  his  subject.  Where 
the  understanding  is  not  active  and  teeming,  but  pos- 
sessed by  a  few  vast  and  powerful  ideas,  (which  was 
the  case  of  MUton,)  there  the  funds  of  a  varied 
rhetoric  are  wanting.  On  the  other  hand,  where  the 
understanding  is  all  alive  with  the  subtilty  of  distinc- 
tions, and  nourished  (as  Jeremy  Taylor's  was)  by 
casuistical  divinity,  the  variety  and  opulence  of  the 
rhetoric  is  apt  to  be  oppressive.  But  this  tendency,  in 
the  case  of  Taylor,  was  happily  checked  and  balanced 
by  the  commanding  passion,  intensity,  and  solemnity 
of  his  exalted  theme,  which  gave  a  final  unity  to  the 
tumultuous  motions  of  his  mtellect.  The  only  very 
obvious  defects  of  Taylor  were  in  the  mechanical  part 
of  his  art,  in  the  mere  technique  ;  he  writes  like  one 
who  never  revises,  nor  tries  the  effect  upon  his  ear  of 
his  periods  as  musical  wholes  ;  and  in  the  syntax  and 
connection  of  the  parts  seems  to  have  been  habitually 
careless  of  slight  blemishes. 

Jeremy  Taylor^  died  in  a  few  years  after  the  Restora- 
tion. Sir  Thomas  Browne,  though  at  that  time  nearly 
thirty  years  removed  from  the  first  surreptitious  edition 
of  his  Religio  Medici,  lingered  a  little  longer.  But, 
when  both  were  gone,  it  may  be  truly  afiirmed  that 
>liP  ^reat   oracles   of    rhetoric   were    finally   silenced. 


542  EHETOBIC. 

South  and  Barrow,  indeed,  were  brilliant  dialecticiana 
in  different  styles  ;  but,  after  Tillotson,  with  his 
meagre  intellect,  his  low  key  of  feeling,  and  the  smug 
and  scanty  draperies  of  his  style,  had  announced  a  new 
era,  —  English  divinity  ceased  to  be  the  racy  vineyard 
that  it  had  been  in  ages  of  ferment  and  struggle. 
Like  the  soil  of  Sicily,  {vide  Sir  H.  Davy's  Agricultural 
Chemistry,)  it  was  exhausted  forever  by  the  tilth  and 
rank  fertility  of  its  golden  youth. 

Since  then,  great  passions  and  high  thinking  have 
either  disappeared  from  literature  altogether,  or  thrown 
themselves  into  poetic  forms  which,  with  the  privilege 
of  a  masquerade,  are  allowed  to  assume  the  spirit  of 
past  ages,  and  to  speak  in  a  key  unknown  to  the 
general  literature.  At  all  events,  no  pulpit  oratory  of 
a  rhetorical  cast,  for  upwards  of  a  century,  has  been 
able  to  support  itself,  when  stripped  of  the  aids  of 
voice  and  action.  Robert  Hall  and  Edward  Irving, 
when  printed,  exhibit  only  the  spasms  of  weakness. 
Nor  do  we  remember  one  memorable  burst  of  rhetoric 
in  the  pulpit  eloquence  of  the  last  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years,  with  the  exception  of  a  fine  oath  ejacu- 
lated by  a  dissenting  minister  of  Cambridge,  who, 
when  appealing  for  the  confirmation  of  his  words  to 
the  grandeur  of  man's  nature,  swore  —  By  this  and 
by  the  other,  and  at  length,  '  By  the  Iliad,  by  the 
Od  j'ssey '  —  as  the  climax,  in  a  long  bead-roll  of 
speciosa  miracula,  which  he  had  apostrophized  as 
monuments  of  human  power.  As  to  Foster,  he  has 
been  prevented  from  preaching  by  a  complaint  affect- 
ing the  throat;  but,  judging  from  the  quality  of  his 
celebrated  Essays,  he  could  never  have  figured  as  a 
truly  splendid  rhetorician ;  for  the  imagery  and  oroak- 


EHETOBIC.  o43 

mental  parts  of  liis  Essays  have  evidently  not  grown 
ap  in  the  loom,  and  concurrently  with  the  texture  of 
the  thoughts,  but  have  been  separately  added  after- 
wards, as  so  much  embroidery  or  fiinge. 

Politics,  meantime,  however,  inferior  in  any  shape 
to  religion,  as  an  ally  of  real  eloquence,  might  yet 
either  when  barbed  by  an  interest  of  intense  person- 
ality, or  on  the  very  opposite  footing  of  an  interest 
comprehensively  national,  have  irritated  the  growth  of 
rhetoric  such  as  the  spirit  of  the  times  allowed.  In 
one  conspicuous  instance  it  did  so  ;  but  generally  it 
had  little  effect,  as  a  cursory  glance  over  the  two  last 
centuries  will  show. 

In  the  reign  of  James  I.  the  House  of  Commons  first 
became  the  theatre  of  struggles  truly  national.  The 
relations  of  the  people  and  the  crown  were  then 
brought  to  issue ;  and  under  shifting  names,  continued 
sub  judice  from  that  time  to  1688  ;  and  from  that 
time,  in  fact,  a  corresponding  interest  was  directed  to 
the  proceedings  of  Parliament.  But  it  was  not  until 
1642  that  any  free  communication  was  made  of  what 
passed  in  debate.  During  the  whole  of  the  Civil  "War, 
the  speeches  of  the  leading  members  upon  all  greal 
questions  were  freely  published  in  occasional  pam- 
phlets. Naturally  they  were  very  much  compressed  ; 
but  enough  survives  to  show  that,  from  the  agitations 
of  th«  times,  and  the  religious  gravity  of  the  House, 
no  rhetoric  was  sought,  or  would  have  been  tolerated. 
In  the  reign  of  Charles  II  ,  judging  from  such  records 
as  we  have  of  the  most  critical  debates,  (that  pre- 
gerved  by  Locke,  for  instance,  through  the  assistance 
of  his  patron  Lord  Shaftesbury,)  the  general  tone  and 
standai'd  of  Parliamentary  eloquence  had  taken  pretty 


344  EHETORIC. 

nearly  its  present  form  and  level.  The  religious 
gravity  had  then  given  way ;  and  the  pedantic  tone, 
stiffness,  and  formality  of  punctual  divisions,  had  been 
abandoned  foi  the  freedom  of  polite  conversation.  It 
was  not,  however,  until  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  that 
the  qualities  and  style  of  parliamentary  eloquence 
were  submitted  to  public  judgment ;  this  was  on  occa- 
sion of  the  trial  of  Dr.  Sacheverel,  which  was  man- 
aged by  members  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
Whigs,  however,  of  that  era  had  no  distinguished 
speakers.  On  the  Tory  side,  St.  John  (Lord  Boling- 
broke)  was  the  most  accomplished  person  in  the 
Louse.  His  style  may  be  easily  collected  from  his 
writings,  which  have  all  the  air  of  having  been  dic- 
tated without  premeditation ;  and  the  effect  of  so 
much  showy  and  fluent  declamation,  combined  wdth 
the  graces  of  his  manner  and  person,  may  be  inferred 
from  the  deep  impression  which  they  seem  to  have 
left  upon  Lord  Chesterfield,  himself  so  accomplished 
a  judge,  and  so  familiar  with  the  highest  efforts  of  the 
age  of  Mr.  Pulteney  and  Lord  Chatham.  With  two 
exceptions  indeed,  to  be  noticed  presently,  Lord 
Bolingbroke  came  the  nearest  of  all  Parliamentary 
orators  who  have  been  particularly  recorded,  to  the 
ideal  of  a  fine  rhetorician.  It  was  no  disadvantage 
to  him  that  he  was  shallow,  being  so  luminous  and 
transparent ;  and  the  splendor  of  his  periodic  diction, 
with  his  fine  delivery,  compensated  his  defect  in 
imagery.  Sir  Robert  Walpole  was  another  Lord 
Londonderry ;  like  him,  an  excellent  statesman,  and 
a  first-rate  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons,  but  in 
pther  respects  a  plain,  unpretending  man  ;  and,  like 
Lord  Londonderry,  he  had  the  reputation  of  a  block 


fiHETOSIC.  345 

head  with,  all  eminent  blockheads,  and  of  a  man  of 
talents  with  those  who  were  themselves  truly  such. 
'  When  I  was  very  young,'  says,  Burke,  '  a  general 
fashion  told  me  I  was  to  admire  some  of  the  writings 
against  that  minister  ;  a  little  more  maturity  taught 
me  as  much  to  despise  them.'  Lord  Mansfield,  '  the 
fluent  Murray,'  was  or  would  have  been,  but  for  the 
condensation  of  law,  another  Bolingbroke.  '  How 
sweet  an  Ovid  was  in  Murray  lost ! '  says  Pope  ;  and, 
if  the  comparison  were  suggested  with  any  studied 
propriety,  it  ascribes  to  Lord  Mansfield  the  talents  of 
a  first-rate  rhetorician.  Lord  Chatham  had  no  rheto- 
ric at  all,  any  more  than  Charles  Fox  of  the  next 
generation  :  both  were  too  fervent,  too  Demosthenic, 
and  threw  themselves  too  ardently  upon  the  graces 
of  nature.  Mr.  Pitt  came  nearer  to  the  idea  of  a 
rhetorician,  in  so  far  as  he  seemed  to  have  more 
artifice  ;  but  this  was  only  in  the  sonorous  rotundity 
of  his  periods,  which  were  cast  in  a  monotonous 
mould ;  for  in  other  respects  he  would  have  been 
keenly  alive  to  the  ridicule  of  rhetoric  in  a  Fii-st  Lord 
of  the  Treasury. 

All  these  persons,  whatever  might  be  their  other 
differences,  agreed  in  this  —  that  they  were  no  jug- 
glers, but  really  were  that  which  they  appeared  to  be, 
and  never  struggled  for  distinctions  which  did  not 
naturally  belong  to  them.  But  next  upon  the  roll 
comes  forward  an  absolute  charlatan  —  a  charlatan 
the  most  acomplished  that  can  ever  have  figured 
upon  so  intellectual  a  stage  This  was  Sheridan  — 
a  mocking-bird  through  the  entire  scale,  from  tho 
Highest  to  the  lowest  note  of  the  gamut ;  in  fact,  to 
borrow   a   coarse   word,  the   mere   impersonation   of 


846  BHEXOBIO. 

humbug.  Even  as  a  wit,  lie  has  been  long  known  to 
be  a  wholesale  plagiarist ;  and  the  exposures  of  his 
kind  biographer,  Mr.  Moore,  exhibit  him  in  that  line 
as  the  most  hide-bound  and  sterile  of  performers, 
lying  perdue  through  a  whole  evening  for  a  casual 
opportunity,  or  by  miserable  stratagem  creating  an 
artificial  one,  for  exploding  some  poor  starveling  jest ; 
and,  in  fact,  sacrificing  to  this  petty  ambition,  in  a 
degree  never  before  heard  of,  the  ease  and  dignity  of 
his  life.  But  it  is  in  the  character  of  a  rhetorical 
orator,  that  he,  and  his  friends  in  his  behalf,  have  put 
forward  the  hollo  west  pretensions.  In  the  course  of 
the  Hastings'  trial,  upon  the  concerns  of  paralytic 
Begums,  and  ancient  Rannies,  hags  that,  if  ever 
actually  existing,  were  no  more  to  us  and  our  British 
sympathies,  than  we  to  Hecuba,  did  Mr.  Sheridan 
make  his  capital  exhibition.  The  real  value  of  his 
speech  was  never  at  any  time  misappreciated  by  the 
judicious  ;  for  his  attempts  at  the  grand,  the  pathetic, 
and  the  sentimental,  had  been  continually  in  the  same 
tone  of  falsetto  and  horrible  fustian.  Burke,  however, 
who  was  the  most  double-minded  person  in  the  world, 
cloaked  his  contempt  in  hyperbolical  flattery  ;  and  all 
the  unhappy  people  who  have  since  written  lives  of 
Burke,  adopt  the  whole  for  mere  gospel  truth.  Ex- 
actly in  the  same  vein  of  tumid  inanity,  is  the  speech 
which  Mr.  Sheridan  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Rolla  the 
Peruvian.  This  the  reader  may  chance  to  have  heard 
upon  the  stage  ;  or,  in  default  of  that  good  Iz-ck,  we 
present  him  with  the  following  fragrant  twaddle  from 
one  of  the  Begummiads,  which  has  been  enshrined  in 
the  praises  (si  quid  sua  carmina  possunt)  of  many 
worthy  critics ;  the  subject  is  Filial  Piety.     '  Filial 


BHETOEIC.  347 

piety,'    (Mr.    Sheridan  said,)   '  it  was   impossible  by 
words    to    describe,   but    description   by   words    was 
unnecessary.     It  was    that    duty  which   they  all  felt 
and   imderstood,  and  which   required  not   the   poAvers 
of  language  to  explain.     It  was  in  truth  more  properly 
to  be  called  a  'principle  than  a  duty.     It  required  not 
the  aid  of  memory  ;  it  needed  not  the  exercise  of  the 
understanding  ;  it  awaited  not  the  slow  deliberations 
of  reason  ;  it  flowed  spontaneously  from  the  fountain 
cf  our  feelings  ;  it  was   involuntary  in  our  natures  ; 
it  was  a  quality  of  our  being,  innate  and  coeval  with 
life,  which,  though  afterwards  cherished  as  a  passion, 
was  independent  of  our  mental  powers  ;  it  was  earlier 
than  all  intelligence  in  our  souls  ;  it  displayed  itself  in 
the  earliest  impulses  of  the  heart,  and  was  an  emotion 
of  fondness  that  returned  in   smiles  of  gratitude  the 
affectionate  solicitudes,  the   tender  anxieties,  the  en- 
dearing attentions  experienced  before  memory  began, 
but  which  were  not  less  dear  for  not  being  remem- 
bered.    It  was  the  sacrament  of  nature  in  our  hearts, 
by  which  the  union  of  the  parent  and  child  was  seated 
and  rendered  perfect  in  the  community  of  love  ;  and 
which,  strengthening  and  ripening  with  life,  acquired 
vigor  from  the  understanding,  and  was  most  lively  and 
active  when  most  wanted.'     Now  we  put  it  to  any 
candid  reader,  whether   the  above   Birmingham  ware 
might  not  be  vastly  improved  by  one  slight  alteration, 
viz.  omitting  the   two  first  words,  and  reading  it  as  a 
'onundrum.      Considered  as  rhetoric,  it  is  evidently 
fitted   '  to  make  a  horse  sick  ; '  but  as  a  conundrum  in 
the  Lady's  Magazine,  we  contend  that  it  would  have 
great  success. 

How  it  aggravates  the    disgust  with  which   these 


848  EHETOKIC. 

paste-diamunds  are  now  viewed,  to  remember  that 
they  were  paraded  in  the  presence  of  Edmund  Burke 
—  nay,  {credite  posteri  /)  in  jealous  rivalry  of  his 
genuine  and  priceless  jewels.  Irresistibly  one  is 
reminded  of  the  dancing  efforts  of  Lady  Blarney  and 
Miss  Carolina  Wilhelmiua  Skeggs,  against  the  native 
grace  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield's  family  :  —  '  The 
ladies  of  the  town  strove  hard  to  be  equally  easy, 
but  without  success.  They  swam,  spraioled,  lan- 
guished, and  frisked  ;  but  all  would  not  do.  The 
gazers,  indeed,  owned  that  it  was  fine ;  but  neighbor 
Flamborough  observed,  that  Miss  Livy's  feet  seemed 
as  pat  to  the  music  as  its  echo.'  Of  Goldsmith  it  was 
said,  in  his  epitaph,  —  Nil  tetigit  quod  non  ornavit ; 
of  the  Drury-Lanc  rhetorician  it  might  be  said,  with 
equal  truth,  —  Nil  tetigit  quod  non  fiico  aduUeravit. 
But  avaunt,  Birmingham !  let  us  speak  of  a  great 
man. 

All  hail  to  Edmund  Burke,  the  supreme  writer  of 
his  century,  the  man  of  the  largest  and  finest  under- 
standing !  Upon  that  word,  understanding,  we  lay 
a  stress :  for  oh !  ye  immortal  donkeys,  who  have 
written  '  about  him  and  about  him,'  with  what  an 
obstinate  stupidity  have  ye  brayed  away  for  one-third 
of  a  century  about  that  which  ye  are  pleased  to  call 
his  '  fancy.'  Fancy  in  your  throats,  ye  miserable 
twaddlers  !  as  if  Edmund  Burke  were  the  man  to 
play  with  his  fancy,  for  the  purpose  of  separable 
ornament.  He  was  a  man  of  fancy  in  no  other  sense 
than  as  Lord  Bacon  was  so,  and  Jeremy  Taylor,  and 
AS  all  large  and  discursive  thinkers  are  and  must  be  : 
that  is  to  say,  the  fancy  which  he  had  in  coromon 
with  all  mankind,  and  very  probably  in  no  eminen* 


■BHETOBTC. 


U9 


degree,  in  liim  was  urged  into  unusual  activity  under 
the  necessities  of  his  capacious  understanding.  His 
great  and  peculiar  distinction  was  that  he  \iewed  all 
objects  of  the  understanding  under  more  relations 
than  other  men,  and  under  more  complex  relations. 
According  to  the  multiplicity  of  these  relations,  a  man 
is  said  to  have  a  large  understanding  ;  according  to 
their  subtilty,  a  Jine  one  ;  and  in  an  angelic  under- 
standing, all  things  would  appear  to  be  related  to  all. 
Now,  to  apprehend  and  detect  moral  relations,  or  to 
pursue  them  steadily,  is  a  process  absolutely  impos- 
sible without  the  intervention  of  physical  analogies. 
To  say,  therefore,  that  a  man  is  a  great  thinker,  or  a 
fine  thinker,  is  but  another  expression  for  sapng  that 
he  has  a  schematizing  (or,  to  use  a  plainer  but  less 
accurate  expression,  a  figurative)  understanding.  In 
that  sense,  and  for  that  purpose,  Burke  is  figurative  : 
but  understood,  as  he  has  been  understood  by  the 
long-eared  race  of  his  critics,  not  as  thinking  in  and 
by  his  figures,  but  as  deliberately  laying  them  on  by 
way  of  enamel  or  after-ornament,  —  not  as  incar- 
nating, but  simply  as  dressing  his  thoughts  in  im- 
agery, —  so  understood,  he  is  not  the  Burke  of  reality, 
but  a  poor  fictitious  Burke,  modelled  after  the  poverty 
of  conception  which  belongs  to  his  critics. 

It  is  true,  however,  that,  in  some  rare  cases,  Burke 
did  indulge  himself  in  a  pure  rhetorician's  use  of 
fancy ;  consciously  and  profusely  lavishing  his  orna- 
ments for  mere  purposes  of  effect.  Such  a  case 
»ccurs,  for  instance,  in  that  admirable  picture  of  the 
degradation  of  Europe,  where  he  represents  the  dif- 
ferent crowned  heads  as  bidding  against  each  other 
at  Basle  for  the  favor  and  countenance  of  Regicide. 


S50 


RHETOBIC. 


Others  of  the  same  kind  there  are  in  his  hrilliant 
letter  on  the  Duke  of  Bedford's  attack  upon  him  in 
the  House  of  Lords  :  and  one  of  these  we  shall  here 
cite,  disregarding  its  greater  chance  for  being  already 
familiar  to  the  reader,  upon  two  considerations ;  first, 
that  it  has  all  the  appearance  of  being  finished  with 
the  most  studied  regard  to  effect ;  and,  secondly,  for 
an  interesting  anecdote  connected  with  it,  which  we 
have  never  seen  in  print,  but  for  which  we  have 
better  authority  than  coidd  be  produced  perhaps  for 
most  of  those  which  are.  The  anecdote  is,  that 
Burke,  conversing  with  Dr.  Lawrence  and  another 
gentleman  on  the  literary  value  of  his  own  writings, 
declared  that  the  particular  passage  in  the  entire 
range  of  his  works  which  had  cost  him  the  most 
labor,  and  upon  which,  as  tried  by  a  certain  canon  of 
his  own,  his  labor  seemed  to  himself  to  have  been 
the  most  successful,  was  the  following  : 

After  an  introductory  paragraph  which  may  be  thus 
abridged  —  '  The  crown  has  considered  me  after  long 
service.  The  crown  has  paid  the  Duke  of  Bedford  by 
advance.  He  has  had  a  long  credit  for  any  service 
which  he  may  perform  hereafter.  He  is  secure,  and 
long  may  he  be  secure,  in  his  advance,  whether  he 
performs  any  services  or  not.  His  grants  are  en- 
grafted on  the  public  law  of  Europe,  covered  with 
the  awful  hoar  of  innumerable  ages.  They  ar* 
guarded  by  the  sacred  rule  of  prescription.  Thk 
learned  professors  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  however, 
regard  prescription  not  as  a  title  to  bar  all  other  clain* 
—  but  as  a  bar  against  the  possessor  and  proprietoi. 
They  hold  an  immemorial  possession  to  be  no  mor% 
than  an  aggravated  injustice.'  Then  follows  the  pas- 
sage in  question : 


RHETOKIC. 


351 


*  Such  are  their  ideas ;  such  thei?'  religion ;  and 
such  their  law.  But  as  to  our  country  and  our  race, 
as  long  as  the  well-compacted  structure  of  our  church 
and  state,  the  sanctuary,  the  holy  of  holies  of  that 
ancient  law,  defended  by  reverence,  defended  by 
power,  a  fortress  at  once  and  a  temple  ( Templum  in 
modum  arcis*),  shall  stand  inviolate  on  the  brow  of 
the  British  Sion ;  —  as  long  as  the  British  monarchy, 
not  more  limited  than  fenced  by  the  orders  of  the 
state,  shall,  like  the  proud  Keep  of  Windsor,  rising  in 
the  majesty  of  proportion,  and  girt  with  the  double 
belt  of  his  kindred  and  coeval  towers,  as  long  as  this 
awful  structure  shall  oversee  and  guard  the  subjected 
land  —  so  long  the  mounds  and  dykes  of  the  low,  fat, 
Bedford  level  f  will  have  nothing  to  fear  from  all  the 
pickaxes  of  all  the  levellers  of  France.  As  long  as 
our  sovereign  lord  the  king,  and  his  faithful  subjects 
the  lords  and  commons  of  this  realm,  the  triple  cord 
which  no  man  can  break  :  the  solemn  sworn  constitu- 
tional frank-pledge  of  this  nation  ;  the  firm  guarantees 
of  each  other's  being,  and  each  other's  rights  ;  the 
joint  and  several  securities,  each  in  its  place  and  order 
for  every  kind  and  every  quality  of  property  and  of 
dignity,  —  as  long  as  these  endure,  so  long  the  Duke 
of  Bedford  is  safe ;  and  we  are  all  safe  together ;  — 
the  high  from  the  blights  of  envy,  and  the  spoliation 
of  rapacity  ;  the  low  from  the  iron  hand  of  oppres- 
sion, and  the  insolent  spurn  of  contempt.  Amen  J 
and  so  be  it :  and  so  it  -Rail  be, 

"  Diim  domus  ^neae  Capitoli  immobile  saxum 
Accolet  ;  imperiumque  pater  Romanus  habebit."  ' 

•  Tacitus  of  the  Temple  of  Jerusalem. 

f  Bedfo.  d  level,  a  rich  tract  of  land  80  called  in  Bedford- 
thire. 


852  RHETORIC. 

This  was  the  sounding  passage  which  Burke  alleged 
as  the  chef-d'oeuvre  of  his  rhetoric ;  and  the  argu- 
ment, upon  which  he  justified  his  choice,  is  specious 
—  if  not  convincing.  He  laid  it  down  as  a  maxim  of 
composition,  that  every  passage  in  a  rhetorical  per- 
formance, which  was  brought  forward  prominently 
and  relied  upon  as  a  key  (to  use  the  language  of  war) 
in  sustaining  the  main  position  of  the  writer,  ought  to 
involve  a  thought,  an  image,  and  a  sentiment :  and 
Buch  a  synthesis  he  found  in  the  passage  which  we 
have  quoted.  This  criticism,  over  and  above  the 
pleasure  which  it  always  gives  to  hear  a  great  man's 
opinion  of  himself,  is  valuable,  as  showing  that  Burke, 
because  negligent  of  trivial  inaccuracies,  was  not  at 
all  the  less  anxious  about  the  larger  proprieties  and 
decorums :  [for  this  passage,  confessedly  so  labored, 
has  several  instances  of  slovenliness  in  tiifles  ;]  and 
that,  in  the  midst  of  his  apparent  hurry,  he  carried 
out  a  jealous  vigilance  upon  what  he  wrote,  and  the 
eye  of  a  person  practised  in  artificial  eff"ects. 

An  ally  of  Burke's  upon  East  Indian  politics,  ought 
to  have  a  few  words  of  notice,  not  so  much  for  any 
power  that  he  actually  had  as  a  rhetorician,  but 
because  he  is  sometimes  reputed  such.  This  was 
Sir  Philip  Francis,  who,  under  his  early  disguise  of 
Junius,  had  such  a  success  as  no  writer  of  libels  ever 
will  have  again.  It  is  our  private  opinion,  that  this 
success  rested  upon  a  great  delusion  which  has  never 
been  exposed.  The  general  belief  is  —  that  Junius 
was  read  for  his  elegance  ;  we  believe  no  such  thing. 
The  pen  of  an  angel  would  not,  upon  such  a  theme 
as  personal  politics,  have  upheld  the  interest  attached 
to  Junius,  had  there  been  no  other  cause  in  co-opera 


KHETORIC. 


353 


tion.  Language,  after  all,  is  a  limited  instrument : 
and  it  must  be  remembered  that  Junius,  by  the  ex- 
treme narrowness  of  his  range,  which  went  entirely 
upon  matters  of  fact,  and  personal  interests,  still 
further  limited  the  compass  of  that  limited  instrument. 
Fur  it  is  only  in  the  expression  and  management  of 
general  ideas,  that  any  room  arises  for  conspicuous 
elegance.  The  real  truth  is  this :  the  interest  in 
Junius  travelled  downwards  ;  he  was  read  in  the 
lower  ranks,  because  in  London  it  speedily  became 
known  that  he  was  read  with  peculiar  interest  in  the 
highest.  This  was  already  a  marvel  ;  for  newspaper 
patriots  under  the  signatures  of  Publicola,  Brutus, 
and  so  forth,  had  become  a  jest  and  a  by-word  to  the 
real,  practical  statesman  ;  and  any  man  at  leisure  to 
^vrite  for  so  disinterested  a  purpose  as  '  his  country's 
good,'  was  presumed,  of  course,  to  write  in  a  garret. 
But  here  for  the  first  time  a  pretended  patriot,  a 
Junius  Brutus,  was  anticipated  with  anxiety,  and  read 
with  agitation.  Is  any  man  simple  enough  to  believe 
that  such  a  contagion  could  extend  to  cabinet  minis- 
ters, and  official  persons  overladen  with  public  busi- 
ness, on  so  feeble  an  excitement  as  a  little  reputation 
in  the  art  of  constructing  sentences  with  elegance  ; 
an  elegance  which,  after  all,  excluded  eloquence  and 
every  other  positive  quality  of  excellence  ?  That 
this  can  have  been  believed,  shows  the  readiness  with 
which  men  swallow  marvels.  The  real  secret  wa? 
this  :  —  Junius  was  read  with  the  profoundest  interest 
by  members  of  the  cabinet,  who  would  not  have 
paid  half-a-cro^vn  for  all  the  wit  and  elegance  of  this 
world,  simply  because  it  was  most  evident  that  some 
traitor  was  amongst  them  ;  and  that  either  directly  by 
23 


354  KHETOKTC. 

Dne  of  themselves,  or  through  some  abuse  of  hie 
confidence  by  a  servant,  the  secrets  of  office  were 
betrayed.  The  circumstances  of  this  breach  of  trust 
are  now  fully  known  ;  and  it  is  readily  understood 
why  letters,  which  were  the  channel  for  those  per- 
fidies, should  interest  the  ministry  of  that  day  in  the 
deepest  degree.  The  existence  of  such  an  interest, 
but  not  its  cause,  had  immediately  become  known  :  it 
descended,  as  might  be  expected,  amongst  all  classes  : 
once  excited,  it  seemed  to  be  justified  by  the  real 
merits  of  the  letters  ;  which  merit  again,  illustrated 
by  its  efiects,  appeared  a  thousand  times  greater  than 
it  was  ;  and,  finally,  this  interest  was  heightened  and 
sustained  by  the  mystery  which  invested  the  author. 
How  much  that  mystery  availed  in  keeping  alive  the 
reputation  of  Junius,  is  clear  from  this  fact,  that, 
since  the  detection  of  Junius,  the  Letters  have  much 
declined  in  popularity  ;  and  ornamented  editions  of 
them  are  no  longer  the  saleable  article  which  they  were 
some  years  ago. 

In  fact,  upon  any  other  principle,  the  continued 
triumph  of  Junius,  and  his  establishment  as  a  classical 
author,  is  a  standing  enigma.  One  talent,  undoubt- 
edly, he  had  in  a  rare  perfection  —  the  talent  of 
sarcasm.  He  stung  like  a  scorpion.  But,  besides 
that  such  a  talent  has  a  narrow  application,  an  interest 
of  personality  cannot  be  other  than  fugitive,  take  what 
direction  it  may  :  and  malignity  cannot  embalm  itself 
in  materials  that  are  themselves  perishable.  Such 
were  the  materials  of  Junius.  His  vaunted  elegance 
was,  in  a  great  measure,  the  gift  of  his  subject : 
general  terseness,  short  sentences,  and  a  careful 
»voiding  of  all  awkwardness  of  construction  —  theaa 


EHETOBIC.  355 

were  liis  advantages.  And  from  these  he  would  have 
been  dislodged  by  a  higher  subject,  or  one  that  would 
have  forced  him  out  into  a  wider  compass  of  thought. 
Rhetorician  he  was  none,  though  he  has  often  been 
treated  as  such ;  for,  without  sentiment,  without  im- 
agery, without  generalization,  how  should  it  be  possi- 
ble for  rhetoric  to  subsist  ?  It  is  an  absolute  fact,  that 
Junius  has  not  one  principle,  aphorism,  or  remark  of 
a  general  natiu'e  in  his  whole  armory  —  not  in  a 
solitary  instance  did  his  bai'ren  understanding  ascend 
to  an  abstraction,  or  general  idea,  but  lingered  for- 
ever in  the  dust  and  rubbish  of  indi\dduality,  amongst 
the  tangible  reality  of  things  and  persons.  Hence, 
the  peculiar  absurdity  of  that  hypothesis  which  dis- 
covered Junius  in  the  person  of  Burke.  The  opposi- 
tion was  here  too  pointedly  ludicrous  between  Burke, 
who  exalted  the  merest  personal  themes  into  the 
dignity  of  philosophic  speculations,  and  Junius,  in 
whose  hands  the  very  loftiest  dwindled  into  questions 
of  person  and  party. 

Last  of  the  family  of  rhetoricians,  and  in  a  form  of 
rhetoric  as  florid  as  the  age  could  bear,  came  Mr, 
Canning.  '  Sufficit,'  says  a  Roman  author,  '  in  una 
civitate  esse  unum  rhetorem.'  But,  if  more  were  in 
his  age  unnecessary,  in  ours  they  would  have  been 
intolerable^,  lliree  or  four  Mr.  Cannings  would  have 
been  found  a  nuisance  :  indeed,  the  very  admiration 
which  crowned  his  great  displays,  manifested  of  itself 
the  unsuitableness  of  his  style  to  the  atmosphere  of 
public  affairs ;  for  it  was  of  that  kind  which  is  offered 
to  a  young  lady  rising  from  a  brilliant  performance  on 
the  piano-forte.  Something,  undoubtedly,  there  was 
df  too  juvenile  an  air,  too  gaudy  a  flutter  of  plumage, 


856  KHETOKIC. 

m  Mr.  Canning's  more  solemn  exhibitions  ;  but  much 
mdulgence  was  reasonably  extended  to  a  man,  who, 
in  his  class,  was  so  complete.  He  was  formed  for 
winning  a  favorable  attention  by  every  species  of 
popular  fascination  :  to  the  eye  he  recommended 
himself  almost  as  much  as  the  Bolingbroke  of  a 
century  before  :  his  voice,  and  his  management  of 
it,  were  no  less  pleasing:  and  upon  him,  as  upon 
St.  John,  the  air  of  a  gentleman  sate  with  a  native 
grace.  Scholarship  and  literature,  as  far  as  they 
belong  to  the  accomplishments  of  a  gentleman,  he 
too  brought  forward  in  the  most  graceful  manner : 
and  above  all,  there  was  an  impression  of  honor, 
generosity,  and  candor,  stamped  upon  his  manner, 
agreeable  rather  to  his  original  character,  than  to  the 
wrench  which  it  had  received  from  an  ambition  rest- 
ing too  much  on  mere  personal  merits.  What  a  pity 
that  this  '  gay  creature  of  the  elements '  had  not  taken 
his  place  contentedly,  where  nature  had  assigned  it, 
as  one  of  the  ornamental  performers  of  the  time  ! 
His  station  was  with  the  lilies  of  the  field,  which  toi) 
not,  neither  do  they  spin.  He  should  have  thrown 
himself  upon  the  admiring  sympathies  of  the  world 
as  the  most  dazzling  of  rhetorical  artists,  rather  than 
have  challenged  their  angry  passions  in  a  vulgar 
scuffle  for  power.  In  that  case  he  would  have  been 
alive  at  this  hour  —  he  would  have  had  a  perpetuity 
of  that  admiration  which  to  him  was  as  the  breath 
of  his  nostrils  ;  and  would  not,  by  forcing  the  char- 
acter of  rhetorician  into  an  incongruous  alliance  with 
that  of  trading  politician,  have  run  the  risk  of  making 
ooth  ridiculous. 

In  thus  running  over  the  modern  history  of  rhetoric 


EHETOBIC.  357 

we  Kave  confined  ourselves  to  the  literature  of  Eng- 
land :  the  rhetoric  of  the  continent  would  demand  a 
separate  notice,  and  chiefly  on  account  of  the  French 
pulpit  orators.  For,  laying  them  aside,  we  are  not 
aware  of  any  distinct  body  of  rhetoric  —  properly  so 
called  —  in  modern  literature.  Four  continental  lan- 
guages ma}  be  said  to  have  a  literature  regularly 
mounted  in  all  departments,  viz.  the  French,  Italian, 
Spanish,  and  German ;  but  each  of  these  have  stood 
under  separate  disadvantages  for  the  cultivation  of  an 
ornamented  rhetoric.  In  France,  whatever  rhetoric 
they  have,  (for  Montaigne,  though  lively,  is  too  gos- 
siping for  a  rhetorician,)  arose  in  the  age  of  Louis 
XIV. ;  since  which  time,  the  very  same  development 
of  science  and  public  business,  operated  there  and  in 
England,  to  stifle  the  rhetorical  impulses,  and  all  those 
analogous  tendencies  in  arts  and  in  manners  which 
support  it.  Generally  it  may  be  assumed  that  rhetoric 
will  not  survive  the  age  of  the  ceremonious  in  man- 
ners, and  the  gorgeous  in  costume.  An  unconscious 
sympathy  binds  together  the  various  forms  of  the 
elaborate  and  the  fanciful,  under  every  manifestation 
Hence  it  is  that  the  national  convulsions  by  which 
modern  France  has  been  shaken,  produced  oratorj, 
Mirabeau,  Isnard,  the  Abbe  Maury,  but  no  rhetori- 
cians. Florian,  Chateaubriand,  and  others,  who  have 
%mtten  the  most  florid  prose  that  the  modern  taste  can 
bear,  aie  elegant  sentimentalists,  sometimes  maudlin 
and  semi-poetic,  sometimes  even  eloquent,  but  never 
rhetorical.  There  is  no  eddying  about  their  o^vn 
thoughts  ,  no  motion  of  fancy  self-sustained  from  its 
own  activities  ;  no  flux  and  reflux  of  thought,  half 
laeditative,    half  capricious ;    but   strains    of    feeling 


558  EHETOBIC. 

genuine   or   not,  supported   at   every   step   from   the 
^ixcitement  of  independent  external  objects. 

With  respect  to  the  German  literature,  the  case  is 
very  peculiar.  A  chapter  upon  German  rhetoric 
would  be  in  the  same  ludicrous  predicament  as  Van 
Troll's  chapter  on  the  snakes  of  Iceland,  which 
delivers  its  business  in  one  summary  sentence,  an- 
nouncing, that  snakes  in  Iceland  —  there  are  none. 
Rhetoric,  in  fact,  or  any  form  of  ornamented  prose, 
could  not  possibly  arise  in  a  literature,  in  which  prose 
itself  had  no  proper  existence  till  within  these  seventy 
years.  Lessing  was  the  first  German  who  wrote 
prose  with  elegance ;  and  even  at  this  day,  a  decent 
prose  style  is  the  rarest  of  accomplishments  in  Ger- 
many. We  doubt,  indeed,  whether  any  German  has 
written  prose  with  grace,  unless  he  had  lived  abroad, 
(like  Jacobi,  who  composed  indifferently  in  French 
and  German,)  or  had  at  least  cultivated  a  very  long 
acquaintance  with  English  and  French  models.  Fred- 
erick Schlegel  has  been  led,  by  his  comprehensive 
knowledge  of  other  literatures,  to  observe  this  singular 
defect  in  that  of  his  own  country.  Even  he,  however, 
must  have  fixed  his  standard  very  low,  when  he  could 
praise,  as  elsewhere  he  does,  the  style  of  Kant.  Cer- 
tainly in  any  literature,  where  good  models  of  prose 
existed,  Kant  would  be  deemed  a  monster  of  vicious 
diction,  so  far  as  regards  the  construction  of  his  sen- 
tences. He  does  not,  it  is  true,  write  in  the  hybrid 
iialect  which  prevailed  up  to  the  time  of  our  George 
the  First,  when  every  other  word  Avas  Latin,  with  a 
German  inflexion ;  but  he  has  in  perfection  tha* 
obtuseness  which  renders  a  German  taste  insensible 
*o  all  beauty  in  the  ba.ancing  and  structure  of  peri- 


EHETORIC.  359 

ids,  and  to  the  art  by  which  a  succession  of  periods 
modify  each  other.  Every  German  regards  a  sen- 
tence in  the  light  of  a  package,  and  a  package  not 
for  the  mail-coach,  but  for  the  wagon,  into  which 
his  privilege  is  to  crowd  as  much  as  he  possibly  can. 
Having  framed  a  sentence,  therefore,  he  next  pro- 
ceeds to  pack  it,  which  is  effected  partly  by  unwieldy 
tails  and  codicils,  but  chiefly  by  enormous  parenthetic 
involutions.  All  qualifications,  limitations,  exceptions, 
illustrations,  are  stuffed  and  violently  rammed  into  the 
bowels  of  the  principal  proposition.  That  all  this 
equipage  of  accessaries  is  not  so  arranged  as  to  assist 
its  own  orderly  development,  no  more  occurs  to  a 
German  as  any  fault,  than  that  in  a  package  of 
shawls  or  of  carpets,  the  colors  and  patterns  are  not 
fully  displayed.  To  him  it  is  sufficient  that  they  are 
there.  And  Mr.  Kant,  when  he  has  succeeded  in 
packing  up  a  sentence  which  covers  three  close- 
printed  octavo  pages,  stops  to  draw  his  breath  with 
the  air  of  one  who  looks  back  upon  some  brilliant 
and  meritorious  performance.  Under  these  disad- 
vantages, it  may  be  presumed  that  German  rhetoric 
is  a  nonentity ;  but  these  disadvantages  would  not 
have  arisen,  had  there  been  a  German  bar  or  a 
German  senate,  with  any  public  existence.  In  the 
absence  of  all  forensic  and  senatorial  eloquence,  no 
standard  of  good  prose  style  —  nay,  which  is  more 
important,  no  example  of  ambition  directed  to  such 
an  object  —  has  been  at  any  time  held  up  to  the 
public  mind  in  Germany  ;  and  the  pulpit  style  has 
been  always  either  rustically  negligent,  or  bristling 
(fvith  pedantry. 
These  disad-^antages  with  regard  to  public  models 


360  BHEXOBIC. 

Df  civil  eloquence,  have  in  part  affected  the  Italians ; 
the  few  good  prose  writers  of  Italy  have  been  his- 
torians ;  and  it  is  observable  that  no  writers  exist  in 
the  department  of  what  are  called  Moral  Essayists; 
a  class  which,  with  us  and  the  French,  were  the  last 
depositaries  of  the  rhetorical  faculty,  when  depressed 
to  its  lowest  key.  Two  other  circumstances  may  be 
noticed  as  unfavorable  to  an  Italian  rhetoric  ;  one,  to 
which  we  have  adverted  before,  in  the  lanffua^e  itself 
—  which  is  too  loitering  for  the  agile  motion,  and  the 
10  aYX'?Qotpoy  of  rhetoric  ;  and  the  other  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  national  mind,  which  is  not  reflective,  nor 
remarkably  fanciful  —  the  two  qualities  most  indis- 
pensable to  rhetoric.  As  a  proof  of  the  little  turn 
for  reflection  which  there  is  in  the  Italian  mind,  we 
may  remind  the  reader  that  they  have  no  meditative 
or  philosophic  poetry,  such  as  that  of  our  Young, 
Cowper,  &c. ;  a  class  of  poetry  which  existed  very 
early  indeed  in  the  English  literature,  (e.  g.  Sir  T. 
Davies,  Lord  Brooke,  Henry  More,  &c. ;)  and  which, 
in  some  shape,  has  arisen  at  some  stage  of  almost 
ivery  European  literatui-e. 

Of  the  Spanish  rhetoric,  a  priori,  we  should  have 
b  jgured  well :  but  the  rhetoric  of  their  pulpit  in  past 
times,  which  is  all  that  we  know  of  it,  is  vicious  and 
unnatural ;  whilst,  on  the  other  hand,  for  eloquence 
profound  and  heartfelt,  measuring  it  by  those  many 
admirable  proclamations  issued  in  all  quarters  of 
Spain  during  1808-9,  the  national  capacity  must  be 
presumed  to  be  of  the  very  highest  order. 

"We  are  thus  thrown  back  upon  the  French  pulpi* 
orators  as  the  only  considerable  body  of  modern 
rhetoricians    out  of   our    own  language.     No  writeri 


KHETOBIC. 


361 


u-e  more  uniformly  praised;  none  are  more  eutii-ely 
neglected.     This  is  one  of  those  numerous  hypocri- 
Bies  so  common  in  matters  of  taste,  where  the  critic 
is  always  ready  with  his  good  word,  as  the  readiest 
way  of  getting  rid  of  the  subject.     To  blame  might 
be  hazardous  ;  for  blame  demands  reasons  ;  but  praise 
enjoys  a  ready  dispensation  from  all   reasons  and  from 
all    discrimination.       Superstition,   however,   as   it  is, 
under  which  the  French  rhetoricians  hold  their  repu- 
tation, we  have  no   thought  of  attempting  any   dis- 
turbance to  it  in  so  slight  and  incidental  a  notice  as 
this.     Let  critics  by  all  means  continue  to  invest  them 
with    every   kind   of  imaginary   splendor.     Meantime 
let  us  suggest,  as  a  judicious  caution,  that   French 
rhetoric  should  be  praised  with  a  reference  only  to  its 
own  narrow  standard :  for  it  would  be  a  most  unfor- 
tunate trial  of  its  pretensions,  to  bring  so  meagre  a 
style  of  composition  into  a  close  comparison  A\-ith  the 
gorgeous  opulence   of    the   English   rhetoric    of    the 
same  century.     Under  such  a  comparison,  two  capital 
points  of  weakness  would  force  themselves  upon  the 
least  observant  of  critics  —  first,  the  defect  of   strik- 
ing 'magery  ;    and,   secondly,  the  slenderness  of  the 
thoughts.     The  rhetorical  manner  is  supported  in  the 
French   writers  chiefly  by  an   abundance  of  ohs  and 
dJis  —  by  interrogatories—  apostrophes  —  and  startling 
exclamations  :  all  which  are  mere  mechanical  devices 
for  raising   the   style  ;    but  in  the   substance    of  the 
composition,  apart  from   its  dress,  there   is   nothing 
properly   rhetorical.     The    leading    thoughts    in    all 
pulpit  eloquence  being  derived  from  religion,  and,  m 
iict,  the  common  inheritance   of  human  nature,  —  if 
toy  PAnnot  be  novel,  foj   that  very  reason  cannot  be 


562  EHEIOBIO. 

undignified ;  but,  for  tlie  same  reason,  they  are  apt 
to    become  unafFecting  and   trite,  unless   varied  and 
individualized  by  new  infusions  of  tbougbt  and  feel- 
ing.    The  smooth  monotony  of  the  leading  religioun 
topics,  as  managed  by  the  French  orators,  unde.   the 
treatment  of  Jeremy   Taylor,  receives   at   each  turn 
of  the    sentence   a   new    flexure  —  or  what    may   be 
called  a  separate  articulation  :  ^*  old  thoughts  are  sur- 
veyed from  novel   stations  and  under  various  angles : 
and  a  field  absolutely  exhausted  throws  up  eternally 
fresh  verdure    under    the  fructifying   lava  of  burning 
imagery.     Human  life,   for  example,  is  short  —  human 
happiness  is  frail :  how  trite,  how  obvious  a  thesis! 
Yet,  in  the  beginning  of  the  Holy  Dying,  upon  that 
simplest  of  themes  how  magnificent  a  descant !     Va- 
riations the   most  original  upon  a  ground  the  most 
universal,  and  a  sense  of  novelty  diSiised  over  truths 
coeval  with  human  life !    Finally,  it  may  be  remarked 
of  the  imagery  in  the  French  rhetoric,  that  it  is  thinly 
sown,  common-place,  deficient  in  splendor,  and,  above 
all,   merely   ornamental ;    that   is   to   say,   it   does  no 
more  than  echo  and  repeat  what  is  already  said  in  the 
ought  which  it  is  brought  to  illustrate  ;  whereas,  in 
^^Z^>-  ^  Taylor,  and  in  Burke,  it  will  be  found  usually 
times,  wu.  ,^^  amplify  the  thought,  or  to  fortify  it  by 
unnatural;  wh. .^^^^^^^^^^  ^^  i^g  ^^^^^     r^^^^^  f^^.  ^^, 
profound  and  hear.^,,^^   ^^^^.^    q^^^ed,  from   Taylor, 
admii-able    proclamation.,  ^^^  <.„  ^^^  continual  mercies 
Spain  during   1808-9,  th^^^^  j^  staggered  by  the  ap- 
presumed  to  be  of  the  very^  .^^^^:^^^  ^  ^.^^li^y,  and  of  so 
We  are  thus  thro^vn  b^^^^^^  ^^^^p^  ^^^  ^^^^^  .  ^^^ 
orators  as    the    only    consi^.^  f^^^^  ^^^  ^^^^  of  a  mac 
rhetoricians    out  of   our    0W3  ^cean,  and  yet  insensible 


BHETOKIC.  363 

to  tliat  world  of  waters  above  him,  from  the  uniformity 
and  eqiiality  of  its  pressure,  flashes  upon  us  with  a 
sense  of  something  equally  marvellous,  in  a  case  which 
we  know  to  be  a  physical  fact.  We  are  thus  recon- 
ciled to  the  proposition,  by  the  same  image  which 
illustrates  it. 

In  a  single  mechanical  quality  of  good  writing,  that 
is,  in  the  structure  of  their  sentences,  the  French 
rhetoricians,  in  common  with  French  writers  generally 
of  that  age,  are  superior  to  ours.  This  is  what  in 
common  parlance  is  expressed  (though  inaccurately) 
by  the  word  style,  and  is  the  subject  of  the  third  part 
of  the  work  before  us.  Dr.  Whately,  however,  some- 
what disappoints  us  by  his  mode  of  treating  it.  He 
alleges,  indeed,  with  some  plausibility,  that  his  subject 
bound  him  to  consider  style  no  further  than  as  it  was 
related  to  the  purpose  of  persuasion.  But  besides 
that  it  is  impossible  to  treat  it  with  eflfect  in  that  muti- 
lated section  —  even  within  the  limits  assumed,  we  are 
not  able  to  trace  any  outline  of  the  law  or  system  by 
which  Dr.  Whately  has  been  governed  in  the  choice 
of  his  topics  :  we  find  many  very  acute  remarks  de- 
livered, but  all  in  a  desultory  way,  which  leave  the 
reader  no  means  of  judging  how  much  of  the  ground 
has  been  surveyed,  and  how  much  omitted.  We 
'egret  also  that  he  has  not  addressed  himself  more 
specifically  to  the  question  of  English  style,  a  subject 
which  has  not  yet  received  the  comprehensive  discus- 
sion which  it  merits.  In  the  age  of  our  great  rhetori- 
lians,  it  is  remarkable  that  the  English  language  had 
never  been  made  an  object  of  conscious  attention. 
No  man  seems  to  have  reflected  that  there  was  a 
wrong   and  a  right  in  the  choice  of  words  — in  the 


S64  RHETOBIC. 

choice  of  phrases  —  in  the  mechanism  of  sentences 
—  or  even  in  the  grammar.  Men  wrote  eloquently, 
because  they  wrote  feelingly :  they  wrote  idiomati- 
cally because  they  wrote  naturally,  and  without  affec- 
tation: but  if  a  false  or  acephalous  structure  of 
sentence,  —  if  a  barbarous  idiom,  or  an  exotic  word 
happened  to  present  itself,  —  no  writer  of  the  17th 
century  seems  to  have  had  any  such  scrupulous  sense 
of  the  dignity  belongmg  to  his  own  language,  as 
should  make  it  a  duty  to  reject,  or  worth  his  while 
to  re-model  a  line.  The  fact  is,  that  verbal  criticism 
had  not  as  yet  been  very  extensively  applied  even 
to  the  classical  languages  :  the  Scaligers,  Casaubon, 
and  Salmasius,  were  much  more  critics  on  things  than 
critics  philologically.  However,  even  in  that  age,  the 
French  writers  were  more  attentive  to  the  cultivation 
of  their  mother  tongue,  than  any  other  people.  It  is 
justly  remarked  by  Schlegel,  that  the  most  worthless 
writers  amongst  the  French,  as  to  matter,  generally 
take  pains  with  their  diction  ;  or  perhaps  it  is  more 
true  to  say,  that  with  equal  pains,  in  their  language  it 
is  more  easy  to  write  well  than  in  one  of  greater 
compass.  It  is  also  true,  that  the  French  are  indebted 
for  their  greater  purity  from  foreign  idioms,  to  their 
much  more  limited  acquaintance  with  foreign  litera- 
ture. Still,  with  every  deduction  from  the  merit,  the 
fact  is  as  we  have  said  ;  and  it  is  apparent,  not  only 
by  innumerable  evidences  in  the  concrete,  but  by  the 
superiority  of  all  their  abstract  auxiliaries  in  the  ar* 
of  writing.  We  English,  even  at  this  day,  have  n& 
•yarned  grammar  of  our  language  ;  nay,  we  have 
allow  d  the  blundering  attempt,  in  that  department, 
of   an  imbecile    stranger,    to  supersede    the    learned 


EHETOSIC.  365 

(however  imperfect)  works  of  our  T^^allis,  Lowtli, 
&c.  ;  we  have  also  no  sufficient  dictionary  ;  and  we 
aave  no  work  at  all,  sufficient  or  insufficient,  on  the 
phrases  and  idiomatic  niceties  of  our  language,  corres- 
ponding to  the  works  of  Yaugelas  and  others,  for  the 
French. 

Hence  an  anomaly,  not  found  perhaps  in  any  litera- 
ture but  ours,  that  the  most  eminent  English  writers 
do  not  write  their  mother  tongue  without  continual 
violations  of  propriety.  "With  the  single  exception  of 
Mr.  Wordsworth,  who  has  paid  an  honorable  attention 
to  the  purity  and  accuracy  of  his  English,  we  believe 
tha^  there  is  not  one  celebrated  author  of  this  day 
who  has  written  two  pages  consecutively,  without 
some  flagrant  impropriety  in  the  grammar,  (such  as 
the  eternal  confusion  of  the  preterite  with  the  past 
participle,  confusion  of  verbs  transitive  with  intransi- 
tive, &c.  &c.)  or  some  violation  more  or  less  of  the 
vernacular  idiom,  li  If  this  last  sort  of  blemish  does 
not  occur  so  frequently  in  modern  books,  the  reason 
is,  —  that  since  Dr.  Johnson's  time,  the  freohness  of 
the  idiomatic  style  has  been  too  frequently  abandoned 
for  the  lifelec?  luechanism  of  a  style  purely  bookish 
and  artificial. 

The  practical  judgments  of  Dr.  WTiately  are  such 
as  will  seldom  be  disputed.  Dr.  Johnson  for  his  triads 
and  his  antithetic  balances,'  he  taxes  more  than  once 
with  a  plethoric  and  tautologic  tympany  of  sentence  ; 
and  in  the  following  passage,  with  a  very  happy 
illustration  :  — '  Sentences,  which  might  have  been 
expressed  as  simple  ones,  are  expanded  into  complex 
^nes  by  the  addition  of  clauses  which  add  little  oi 
aothing  to  the  s  ":n5e  ;  and  which  have  been  compared 


866  BHETOKIC. 

to  the  false  handles  and  key-holes  with  which  fund 
ture  is  decorated,  that  serve  no  other  purpose  than  to 
correspond  to  the  real  ones.     Much  of  Dr.  Johnson's 
writings  is  chargeable  with  this  fault.' 

We  recollect  a  little  biographic  sketch  of  Dr.  John- 
son, published  immediately  after  his  death,  in  which, 
amongst  other  instances  of  desperate  tautology,  the 
author  quotes  the  well  known  lines  from  the  imitation 
of  Juvenal  — 

*  Let  observation,  with  extensive  view. 
Survey  mankind  from  China  to  Peru; ' 

and  contends,  with  some  reason,  that  this  is  saying  in 
effect,  —  '  Let  observation  with  extensive  observation 
observe  mankind  extensively.^  Certainly  Dr.  Johnson 
was  the  most  faulty  Avriter  in  this  kind  of  inanity  that 
ever  has  played  tricks  with  language.^  On  the  other 
hand,  Burke  was  the  least  so  ;  and  we  are  petrified  to 
find  him  described  by  Dr.  Whately  as  a  writer  '  qui 
variare  cupit  rem  prodigialiter  unam,'  and  as  on  that 
account  offensive  to  good  taste.  The  understanding 
of  Burke  was  even  morbidly  impatient  of  tautology  : 
progress  and  motion  —  everlasting  motion  —  was  a 
mere  necessity  of  his  intellect.  We  will  venture  to 
offer  a  king's  ransom  for  one  unequivocal  case  of 
tautology  from  the  whole  circle  of  Burke's  writings. 
The  principium  indiscernibilium,  upon  which  Leibnitz 
affirmed  the  impossibility  of  finding  any  two  leaves  of 
a  tree  that  should  be  mere  duplicates  of  each  other, 
may  be  applied  to  Burke  as  safely  as  to  nature  ;  no 
iwo  propositions,  we  are  satisfied,  can  be  found  in 
him,  which  do  not  contain  a  larger  variety  than  is 
l^quisite  to  their  justification. 


RHETOBIC.  367 

Speaking  of  the  advantages  for  energy  and  effect 
in  the  license  of  arrangement  open  to  the  ancient 
languages,  especially  to  the  Latin,  Dr.  Whately  cites 
the  following  senterrce  from  the  opening  of  the  4th 
Book  of  Q.  Curtius  :  —  Darius  tanti  modo  exercittis 
rex,  qui,  triuinphantis  magis  quam  dimicantis  more, 
curru  sublimis  inierat  p}'(xlium,  — per  Joca,  qucB  prope 
immensis  agminibus  compleverat,  jam  inania,  et  in- 
genti  solitudine  vasta  fugiehat.  '  The  effect,'  says 
he,  '  of  the  concluding  verb,  placed  where  it  is,  is 
most  striking.'^  The  sentence  is  far  enough  from  a 
good  one :  but,  confining  ourselves  to  the  sort  of  merit 
for  which  it  is  here  cited,  as  a  merit  peculiar  to  the 
Latin,  we  must  say  that  the  very  same  position  of  the 
verb,  with  a  finer  effect,  is  attainable,  and,  in  fact, 
often  attained  in  English  sentences  :  see,  for  instance, 
the  passage  in  the  Duke  of  Gloucester's  soliloquy  — 
Now  is  the  winter  of  our  discontent  —  and  ending. 
In  the  deep  hosom  of  the  ocean  buried.  See  also  an- 
other at  the  beginning  of  Hooker's  Ecclesiastical  Polity 
on  the  thanklessness  of  the  labor  employed  upon  the 
foundations  of  truth,  which,  says  he,  like  those  of 
buildings,  '  are  in  the  bosom  of  the  earth  concealed.' 
The  fact  is,  that  the  common  cases  of  inversion,  such 
as  the  suspension  of  the  verb  to  the  end,  and  the 
anticipation  of  the  objective  case  at  the  beginning, 
are  not  sufiicient  illustrations  of  the  Latin  structure. 
All  this  can  be  done  as  well  by  the  English.  It  is 
not  mere  power  of  inversion,  but  of  self-intrication, 
and  of  self-dislocation,  which  mark  the  extremity  of 
the  artificial  structure  ;  that  power  by  which  a  se- 
\[uence  of  words,  that  naturally  is  directly  consecutive, 
iommences,  intermits,  and  reappears  at  a  remote  part 


368  RHETORIC. 

of  the  sentence,  like  what  is  called  drake-stone  on  the 
surface  of  a  river.  In  this  power  the  Greek  is  almost 
as  much  helow  the  Latin  as  all  modern  languages  ; 
and  in  this,  added  to  its  elliptic  brevity  of  connection 
and  transition,  and  to  its  wealth  and  abstractions  '  the 
long-tailed  words  in  osity  and  ation,^  lie  the  peculiar 
capacities  of  the  Latin  for  rhetoric. 

Dr.  W.  lays  it  down  as  a  maxim  in  rhetoric,  that 
'  elaborate  stateliness  is  always  to  be  regarded  as  a 
worse  fault  than  the  slovenliness  and  languor  which 
accompany  a  very  loose  style.'  But  surely  this  is  a 
rash  position  :  —  stateliness  the  most  elaborate,  in  an 
absolute  sense,  is  no  fault  at  all ;  though  it  may 
happen  to  be  so  in  relation  to  a  given  subject,  or  to 
any  subject  under  given  circumstances.  '  Belshazzar 
the  king  made  a  great  feast  for  a  thousand  of  his 
lords.'  Reading  these  words,  who  would  not  be  justly 
offended  in  point  of  taste,  had  his  feast  been  charac- 
terized by  elegant  simplicity  ?  Again,  at  a  corona- 
tion, what  can  be  more  displeasing  to  a  philosophic 
taste  than  a  pretended  chastity  of  ornament,  at  war 
with  the  very  purposes  of  a  solemnity  essentially 
magnificent?  An  imbecile  friend  of  ours,  in  1825, 
brought  us  a  sovereign  of  a  new  coinage,  '  which ' 
(said  he)  '  I  admire,  because  it  is  so  elegantly  simple.' 
This,  he  flattered  himself,  was  thinking  like  a  man  of 
caste.  But  mark  how  we  sent  him  to  the  right  about ; 
'  and  that,  weak-minded  friend,  is  exactly  the  thing 
which  a  coin  ought  not  to  be  :  the  duty  of  a  golden 
coin  is  to  be  as  florid  as  it  can,  rich  with  Corinthian 
>rnaments,  and  as  gorgeous  as  a  peacock's  tail.'  So 
of  rhetoric,  imagine  that  you  read  these  words  of 
'ntroduction,  '  And  on  a  set  day,   Tullius  Cicero  re- 


BHETOEIC.  36.** 

turned  thanks  to  Cccsar  on  lehalf  of  Marcus  Mar- 
cellus,*  what  sort  of  a  speech  is  reasonably  to  be 
expected?  The  whole  purpose  being  a  festal  and 
ceremonial  one,  thanksgiving  its  sole  burden  first  and 
last,  what  else  than  the  most  '  elaborate  stateliness  ? ' 
If  it  were  not  stately,  and  to  the  very  verge  of  the 
pompous,  Mr.  "Wolf  would  have  had  one  argument 
more  than  he  had,  and  a  better  than  any  he  has  pro- 
duced, for  suspecting  the  authenticity  of  that  thrice/ 
famous  oration. 

In  the  course  of  his  dissertation  on  style.  Dr.  W., 
very  needlessly,  enters  upon  the  thorny  question  of 
the  quiddity,  or  characteristic  difference,  of  poetry  as 
distinguished  from  prose.  ^'  "We  coidd  much  have 
wished  that  he  had  forborne  to  meddle  with  a  qucestio 
vexata  of  this  nature,  both  because,  in  so  incidenteil 
and  cursory  a  discussion,  it  could  not  receive  a  proper 
investigation  ;  and  because  Dr.  "Whately  is  apparently 
not  familiar  with  much  of  what  has  been  written  on 
that  subject.  On  a  matter  so  slightly  discussed,  we 
shall  not  trouble  ourselves  to  enter  farther,  than  to 
express  our  astonishment  that  a  logician  like  Dr. 
Whately  should  have  allowed  himself  to  deliver  so 
nugatory  an  argument  as  this  which  follows  :  — '  Any 
composition  in  verse,  (and  none  that  is  not,)  is  always 
called,  whether  good  or  bad,  a  poem,  by  all  who  have 
no  favorite  hypothesis  to  maintain.'  And  the  infer- 
ence manifestly  is,  that  it  is  rightly  so  called.  Now, 
if  a  man  has  taken  up  any  fixed  opinion  on  the 
subject,  no  matter  whether  A\Trong  or  right,  and  has 
»easons  to  give  for  his  opinion,  this  man  comes  under 
the  description  of  those  who  have  a  favorite  hypothesis 
to  maintain.  It  follows,  therefore,  tha*  *;he  only  clas» 
24 


370  KHETOmC. 

of  people  wliom  Dr.  Whately  will  allow  as  unbiassed 
judges  on  this  question  —  a  question  not  of  fiict,  but 
of  opinion  —  are  those  who  have,  and  who  profess  to 
have,  no  opinion  at  all  upon  the  subject;  or,  having 
one,  have  no  reasons  for  it.  But,  apart  from  this  con- 
tradiction, how  is  it  possible  that  Dr.  Whately  should, 
in  any  case,  plead  a  popular  usage  of  speech,  as  of 
any  weight  in  a  philosophic  argument  ?  Still  more, 
how  is  it  possible  in  this  case,  where  the  accuracy  of 
the  popular  usage  is  the  very  thing  in  debate,  so  that 
—  if  pleaded  at  all  —  it  must  be  pleaded  as  its  own 
justification?  Alms-giving  —  and  nothing  but  alms- 
giving —  is  universally  called  charity,  and  mistaken 
for  the  charity  of  the  Scriptures,  by  all  who  have  no 
favorite  hypothesis  to  maintain  —  i.  e.  by  all  the  in- 
considerate. But  Dr.  Whately  will  hardly  draw  any 
argument  from  this  usage  in  defence  of  that  popular 
notion. 

'u  speaking  thus  freely  of  particular  passages  in 
Dr.  Whately' s  book,  we  are  so  far  from  meaning  any 
disrespect  to  him,  that,  on  the  contrary,  if  we  had  not 
been  impressed  with  the  very  highest  respect  for  his 
talents,  by  the  acuteness  and  originality  which  illumi- 
nate every  part  of  his  book,  we  could  not  have 
allowed  ourselves  to  spend  as  much  time  upon  the 
whole,  as  we  have,  in  fact,  spent  upon  single  para- 
graphs. In  reality,  there  is  not  a  section  of  his  work 
which  has  not  furnished  us  with  occasion  for  some 
profitable  speculations  ;  and  we  are,  in  consequence, 
most  anxious  to  see  his  Logic,  which  treats  a  subject 
BO  much  more  important  than  rhetoric,  and  so  obsti- 
ttately  misrepresented,  that  it  would  delight  us  much 
•0  anticipate  a  radical  exposure  of  the  errors  on  thi» 


EHETOBIC.  ^'  *■ 


gubject,  taken  up  from  the  days  of  Lord  Bacon.     It 
has  not  fallen  in  our  way  to  quote  much  from  Dr.  . 
Whately  totidem  verbis;  our  apology  for  which  wil 
be  found  in  the  broken  and  discontinuous  method  of 
treatment  by  short  sections  and  paragraphs,  which  a 
subject  of  this  nature  has  necessarily  imposed  upon 
him      Had  it  coincided  with  our  purpose  to  go  more 
into  detail,  we  could  have  delighted  our  readers  with 
some  brilliant  examples  of  philosophical  penetration, 
applied  to  questions  interesting  from  their  importance 
or  difficulty,  with  the  happiest  effect.     As  it  is,  we 
shall  content  ourselves  with  saying,  that,  m  any  ele- 
mentary work,  it  has  not  been  our  fortune  to  witness 
a    rarer    combination    of    analytical   acuteness,   with 
severity  of  judgment;  and  when  we  add  that  these 
qualities  are  recommended  by  a  scholar-like  elegance 
of  manner,  we  suppose  it  hardly  necessary  to  add 
that  Dr  Whately's  is  incomparably  the  best  book  of 
its  class,  since  the  days  of  Campbell's  PhUouophy  of 
Rhetoric. 

[Note. -In  what  is  said  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper 
of  the  true  meaning  of  the  enthymeme,  as  determmed  b, 
Facciolati,  we  must  be  understood  with  an  exclusive  refer- 
ence to  rhetoric.  In  logic  the  old  acceptation  cannot  be  dw- 
turbed.] 


LANGUAGE. 


No  language  is  stationary,  except  in  rude  and  early 
periods  of  society.  The  languages  of  nations  like 
the  English  and  French,  walking  in  the  van  of  civil- 
ization, having  popular  institutions,  and  taking  part 
in  the  business  of  the  earth  with  morbid  energy,  are 
placed  under  the  action  of  causes  that  will  not  allow 
them  any  respite  from  change.  Neologism,  in  revo- 
lutionary times,  is  not  an  infirmity  of  caprice,  seeking 
(to  use  the  proverb  of  Cervantes)  "  for  better  bread 
than  is  made  of  wheat,"  but  is  a  mere  necessity  of 
the  unresting  intellect.  New  ideas,  new  aspects  of 
old  ideas,  new  relations  of  objects  to  each  other,  or 
to  man  —  the  subject  who  contemplates  those  objects 
—  absolutely  insists  on  new  words.  And  it  would 
not  be  a  more  idle  misconception  to  find  a  disease  in 
the  pains  of  growth,  than  to  fancy  a  decay  of  ver- 
nacular purity  in  the  multitude  of  verbal  coinages 
which  modern  necessities  of  thought  and  action  are 
annually  calling  forth  on  the  banks  of  the  Thames 
and  the  Seine. 

Such  coinages,  however,  do  not  all  stand  upon  the 
same  basis  of  justification.  Some  are  regularly 
'brraed  firom  known  roots  upon  known  analogies; 


874  LANGUAOB, 

others  are  formed  licentiously.  Some  again  meet  a 
real  and  clamorous  necessity  of  the  intellect ;  others 
are  fitted  to  gratify  the  mere  appetite  for  ianovation. 
They  take  their  rise  in  various  sources,  and  are 
moulded  with  various  degrees  of  skill.  Let  us  throw 
a  hasty  glance  on  the  leading  classes  of  these  coin- 
ages, and  of  the  laws  which  appear  to  govern  them, 
or  of  the  anomalies  with  which  they  are  sometimes 
associated.  There  are  also  large  cases  of  innovation, 
in  which  no  process  of  coinage  whatever  is  mani 
fested,  but  perhaps  a  simple  restoration  of  old  words, 
long  since  obsolete  in  literature  and  good  society, 
yet  surviving  to  this  hour  in  provincial  usage  ;  or, 
again,  an  extension  and  emancipation  of  terms  here- 
tofore narrowly  restricted  to  a  technical  or  a  pi'ofes- 
sional  use  ;  as  we  see  exemplified  in  the  word  ignore, 
which,  until  very  lately,  was  so  sacred  to  the  sole 
use  of  grand  juries,  that  a  man  would  have  been  ob- 
scurely suspected  by  a  policeman,  and  would  indeed 
have  suspected  himself,  of  something  like  petty  lar- 
ceny, in  forcing  it  into  any  general  and  philosophic 
meaning  ;  which,  however,  it  has  now  assumed,  with 
little  offence  to  good  taste,  and  with  yeomayi  service 
to  the  intellect.  Other  cases  again  there  are,  and  at 
present  far  too  abundant,  in  which  the  necessities  of 
social  intercourse,  and  not  unfrequently  the  necessi- 
ties of  philosophic  speculation,  are  provisionally  sup- 
plied by  slang,  and  the  phraseology  that  is  born  and 
bred  in  the  streets.  The  market-place  and  the  highway, 
ihe  forum  and  tlie  trivium,  are  rich  seed-plots  for  the 
sowing  and  the  reaping  of  many  indispensable  ideas 
That  a  phrase  belongs  to  the  slang  dictionary  is  cer 
tainly  no  absolute  recommendation  ;  gn-^Baetimes  such 


LANGUAGE.  375 

a  phrase  may  be  simply  disgusting  from  its  vulgarity, 
without  adding  anything  to  the  meaning  or  to  the 
rhetorical  force.  How  shocking  to  hear  an  oflQcial 
dignitary  saying  (as  but  yesterday  was  heard), 
"  What  on  eaiHli  could  the  clause  mean  ? "  Yet 
neither  is  it  any  safe  ground  of  absolute  excommuni- 
cation even  from  the  sanctities  of  literature  that  a 
phrase  is  entirely  a  growth  of  the  street.  The  word 
humbug,  for  instance  (as  perhaps  I  may  have  occasion 
to  show  further  on),  rests  upon  a  rich  and  compre- 
hensive basis  ;  it  cannot  be  rendered  adequately 
either  by  German  or  by  Greek,  the  two  richest  of 
human  languages  ;  and  without  this  expressive  word 
we  should  all  be  disarmed  for  one  great  case,  contin- 
ually recurrent,  of  social  enormity.  A  vast  mass  of 
villany,  that  cannot  otherwise  be  reached  by  legal 
penalties  or  brought  within  the  rhetoric  of  scorn, 
would  go  at  large  with  absolute  impunity,  were  it  not 
through  the  stern  Rhadamanthian  aid  of  this  virtuous 
and  inexorable  word. 

Meantime,  as  it  would  not  suit  the  purposes  of  a 
sketch  to  be  too  systematic  in  the  treatment  of  a  sub- 
ject so  inexhaustible  as  language  and  style,  neither 
would  it  be  within  the  limits  of  just  proportion  that  1 
should  be  too  elaborate  in  rehearsing  beforehand  the 
several  avenues  and  classes  of  cases  through  which 
an  opening  is  made  for  new  words  amongst  ourselves 
or  the  French.  I  will  select  such  cases  for  separate 
notice  as  seem  most  interesting  or  most  seasonable. 
But  previously,  as  a  proper  mode  of  awakening  the 
reader  into  giving  relief  and  just  prominence  to  the 
Bubject,  I  will  point  attention  to  the  varying  scale 
of  appreciation  applied  to  the  diction  and  the  nationai 


376  LANGUAGE. 

language,  as  a  ground  of  national  distinction  and 
honor,  by  the  five  great  intellectual  nations  of  ancient 
and  modern  history,  namely,  the  Greeks,  the  Romans, 
the  French,  the  English,  and  the  Germans.  In  no 
country,  except  one,  is  such  a  preface  more  requisite 
than  in  England,  where  it  is  strange  enough  that, 
whilst  the  finest  models  of  style  exist,  and  sub-con- 
sciously operate  efiectively  as  sources  of  delight,  the 
conscious  valuation  of  style  is  least  perfectly  devel- 
oped. 

Every  nation  has  reason  to  feel  interested  in  the 
pretensions  of  its  own  native  language  ;  in  the  orig- 
inal quality  of  that  language  or  characteristic  kind 
of  its  powers,  and  in  the  particular  degree  of  its  ex- 
pansions at  the  period  in  question.  Even  semi-bar- 
barous tribes  sometimes  talk  grandiloquently  on  this 
head,  and  ascribe  to  uncultivated  jargons  a  fertility 
or  a  range  of  expressiveness  quite  incompatible  with 
the  particular  stage  of  social  development  which  the 
national  capacities  have  reached.  Not  only  in  spite 
of  its  barbarism,  but  oftentimes  in  mere  virtue  of  its 
barbarism,  we  find  a  language  claiming  by  its  eulo- 
gists to  possess  more  than  ordinary  powers  of  pictur- 
esque expression.  Such  a  claim  is  continually  put 
forward  on  behalf  of  the  Celtic  languages,  as,  for 
instance,  the  Armoric,  the  Welsh,  the  Irish,  the 
Manx,  the  Gaelic.  Such  a  claim  is  put  forward  also 
for  many  oriental  languages.  Yet,  in  most  of  these 
cases,  there  is  a  profound  mistake  committed ;  and 
generally  the  same  mistake.  Without  being  strictly 
barbarous,  all  these  languages  are  uncultured  and 
rude  in  a  degree  corresponding  to  the  narrow  social 
development  of  the  races  who  speak  them.     These 


LANGUAGE.  377 

races  are  precisely  in  that  state  of  imperfect  expan- 
Bion,  both  civilly  and  intellectually,  under  which  the 
separation  has  not  fully  taken  place  between  poetry 
and  prose.  Their  social  condition  is  too  simple  and 
elementary  to  require  much  cultivation  of  intellectual 
topics.  Little  motive  exists  for  writing,  unless  on 
occasions  of  poetic  excitement.  The  subdued  color- 
ing, therefore,  of  prose  has  not  yet  been  (to  speak 
physiologically)  secreted.  And  the  national  diction 
has  the  appearance  of  being  more  energetic  and 
sparkling,  simply  because  it  is  more  inflated ;  the 
chastities  of  good  taste  not  having  yet  been  called 
forth  by  social  necessities  to  disentangle  the  separate 
forms  of  impassioned  and  non-impassioned  composi- 
tion. The  Kalmuck  Tartars,  according  to  a  German 
traveller,  namely,  Bergmann,  long  resident  amongst 
them,  speak  in  rapturous  terms  of  their  own  lan- 
guage ;  but  it  is  probable  that  the  particular  modes 
of  phraseology  which  fascinate  their  admiration  are 
precisely  those  which  a  more  advanced  civilization, 
and  a  corresponding  development  of  taste,  would 
reject  as  spurious.  Certainly,  in  the  case  of  a  lan- 
guage and  a  literature  likely  to  be  much  in  advance 
of  the  Kalmuck,  namely,  the  Arabic,  at  the  era  of 
Mahomet,  we  find  this  conjecture  realized.  The 
Koran  is  held  by  the  devout  Mahometan  to  be  the 
most  admirable  model  of  composition ;  but  exactly 
those  ornaments  of  diction  or  of  imagery,  which  he 
regards  as  the  jewels  of  the  whole,  are  most  entirely 
in  the  childish  taste  of  imperfect  civilization.  That 
which  attracts  the  Arab  critic  or  the  Persian  is  most 
of  all  repulsive  to  the  masculine  judgment  of  the 
Eiiropean 


378  LANGUAGE, 

Barbansm,  in  short,  through  all  degrees,  generatee 
its  own  barbaresque  standards  of  taste  ;  and  nowhere 
so  much  as  in  the  great  field  of  diction  and  orna- 
mental composition.  A  high  civilization  is  an  indis- 
pensable condition  for  developing  the  full  powers  of 
a  language  ;  and  it  is  equally  a  condition  for  develop- 
ing the  taste  which  must  preside  over  the  apprecia- 
tion of  diction  and  style.  The  elder  civilizations  of 
Egypt  and  of  Asiatic  empires  are  too  imperfectly 
known  at  this  day  to  furnish  any  suggestions  upon 
the  subject.  The  earliest  civilization  that  ofiers  a 
practical  field  of  study  to  our  own  age  is  the  superb 
one  of  Greece. 

It  cannot  be  necessary  to  say  that  from  that  mem- 
orable centre  of  intellectual  activity  have  emanated 
the  great  models  in  art  and  literature,  which,  to 
Christendom,  when  recasting  her  mediaeval  forms, 
became  chiefly  operative  in  controlling  her  luxuri- 
ance, and  in  other  negative  services,  though  not  so 
powerful  for  positive  impulse  and  inspiration.  Greece 
was  in  fact  too  ebullient  with  intellectual  activity,— ^ 
an  activity  too  palestric,  and  purely  human, —  so  that 
the  opposite  pole  of  the  mind,  which  points  to  the 
mysterious  and  the  spiritual,  was,  in  the  agile  Greek, 
too  intensely  a  child  of  the  earth,  starved  and  pal- 
sied ;  whilst  in  the  Hebrew,  dull  and  inert  intellect- 
ually, but  in  his  spiritual  organs  awake  and  sublime, 
the  case  was  precisely  reversed.  Yet,  after  all,  the 
result  was  immeasurably  in  favor  of  the  Hebrew. 
Speaking  in  the  deep  sincerities  of  the  solitary  and 
musing  heart,  which  refuses  to  be  duped  by  the 
whistling  of  names,  we  must  say  of  the  Greek  that 
—  laudatur  et  alget  —  he  has  won  the  admii'ation  of 


LANGUAQR.  379 

the  human  race,  he  is  numbered  amongst  the  chief 
brilliances  of  earth,  but  on  the  deeper  and  more  abid- 
ing nature  of  man  he  has  no  hold.  He  will  perish 
when  any  deluge  of  calamity  overtakes  the  libraries 
of  our  planet,  or  if  any  great  revolution  of  thought 
remoulds  them,  and  will  be  remembered  only  as  a 
generation  of  flowers  is  remembered ;  with  the  same 
tenderness  of  feeling,  and  with  the  same  pathetic 
sense  of  a  natural  predestination  to  evanescence. 
Whereas  the  Hebrew,  by  introducing  himself  to  the 
secret  places  of  the  human  heart,  and  sitting  there  as 
incubator  over  the  awful  germs  of  the  spiritualities 
that  connect  man  with  the  unseen  worlds,  has  per- 
petuated himself  as  a  power  in  the  human  system  ; 
he  is  coenduring  with  man's  race,  and  careless  of 
all  revolutions  in  literature  or  in  the  composition  of 
society.  The  very  languages  of  these  two  races 
repeat  the  same  expression  of  their  intellectual  differ- 
ences, and  of  the  differences  in  their  missions.  The 
Hebrew,  meagre  and  sterile  as  regards  the  numerical 
wealth  of  its  ideas,  is  infinite  as  regards  their  power ; 
the  Greek,  on  the  other  hand,  rich  as  tropic  forests 
in  the  polymorphous  life,  the  life  of  the  dividing  and 
distinguishing  intellect,  is  weak  only  in  the  supreme 
region  of  thought.  The  Hebrew  has  scarcely  any 
individuated  words.  Ask  a  Hebrew  scholar  if  he  has 
a  word  for  a  hall  (as  a  tennis-ball,  pila  luso7ia) ;  he 
says,  "0,  yes."  What  is  it,  then  ?  Why,  he  gives 
you  the  word  for  globe.  Ask  for  07-b,  for  sphei^e,  &c., 
still  you  have  the  same  answer  ;  the  individual  cir- 
cumstantiations  are  swallowed  up  in  the  generic  out- 
line. But  the  Greek  has  a  felicitous  parity  of  wealth 
in  the  abstract  and  the  concrete.     Even  as  vocal  lan^ 


380  LANGUAGE. 

gTiages,  the  Hebrew  and  the  GreeK  obey  the  same 
prevailing  law  of  difference.  The  Hebrew  is  a  sub- 
lime monochord,  uttering  vague  vowel  sounds  as 
indistinct  and  shy  as  the  breathings  of  an  ^olian 
harp  when  exposed  to  a  fitful  breeze.  The  Greek  is 
more  firmly  articulated  by  consonants,  and  the  suc- 
cession of  its  syllables  runs  through  a  more  extensive 
compass  of  sonorous  variety  than  can  be  matched  in 
any  other  known  language.  The  Spanish  and  the 
Italian,  with  all  the  stateliness  of  their  modulation, 
make  no  approach  to  the  canorous  variety  of  the 
sounds  of  the  Greek.^^  Read  a  passage  from  almost 
any  Greek  poet,  and  each  syllable  seems  to  have 
been  placed  in  its  present  position  as  a  relief,  and 
by  way  of  contrast  to  the  syllable  which  follows  and 
precedes. 

Of  a  language  thus  and  otherwise  so  divinely  en- 
dowed, the  Greeks  had  a  natural  right  to  be  proud. 
Yet  were  they  so  ?  There  is  no  appearance  of  it ;  and 
the  reason  no  doubt  lay  in  their  insulated  position. 
Having  no  intellectual  intercourse  with  foreign  na- 
tions, they  had  virtually  no  intercourse  at  all  —  none 
which  could  afiect  the  feelings  of  the  literary  class, 
or  generally  of  those  who  would  be  likely  to  contem- 
plate language  as  a  subject  of  aesthetic  admiration. 
Each  Hellenic  author  might  be  compared  with  others 
of  his  compatriot  authors,  in  respect  to  his  manage- 
ment of  their  common  language  ;  but  not  the  lan- 
guage itself  compared  as  to  structure  or  capacities 
with  other  languages  ;  since  these  other  languages 
(one  and  all)  were  in  any  practical  sense  hardly  as- 
sumed to  exist.  In  this  there  was  no  arrogance 
A-liens,  as  to  country  and  civil  polity,  being  objects 


LANGUAGE.  881 

©f  jealousy  in  the  circumstances  of  Greece,  there 
could  be  no  reason  for  abstaining  from  any  designa- 
tion, however  hostile,  which  might  seem  appropriate 
to  the  relation  between  the  parties.  But,  in  reality, 
the  term  barbarians^^  seems,  for  many  ages,  to  have 
implied  nothing  either  hostile  or  disrespectful.  By 
a  natural  onamatopceia,  the  Greeks  used  the  iterated 
syllables  barbar  to  denote  that  a  man  was  unintel- 
ligible in  his  talk ;  and  by  the  word  barbarian  origin- 
ally it  is  probable  that  no  sort  of  reproach  was 
intended,  but  simply  the  fact  that  the  people  so  called 
spoke  a  language  not  intelligible  to  Greeks.  Latterly 
the  term  seems  to  have  been  often  used  as  one  of 
mere  convenience  for  classification,  indicating  the 
non-Hellenes  in  opposition  to  the  Hellenes ;  and  it  was 
not  meant  to  express  any  qualities  whatever  of  the 
aliens  —  simply  they  were  described  as  being  aliens. 
But  in  the  earliest  times  it  was  meant,  by  the  word 
barbarians,  to  describe  them  under  the  idea  of  men 
who  were  eTeepyUnioi,  men  who,  speaking  in  a  tongue 
different  from  the  Grecian,  spoke  unintelligibly  ;  and 
at  this  day  it  is  very  probable  that  the  Chinese  mean 
nothing  more  by  the  seemingly  offensive  term  outside 
barbarians.  The  mis-translations  must  be  many  be- 
tween ourselves  and  the  Chinese  ;  and  the  probability 
is,  that  this  reputedly  arrogant  expression  means 
only  "  the  aliens,  or  external  people,  who  speak  in 
kOngues  foreign  to  China."  Arrogant  or  not  arro- 
gant, however,  in  the  mouth  of  the  Greeks,  the  word 
barbarians  included  the  whole  human  race  not  living 
in  Hellas,  or  in  colonies  thrown  off  from  Hellas?' 
Having  no  temptation  or  facilities  for  holding  any 
jitellectual  irtercourse   with   those  who  could   not 


332  LANGUAGE. 

communicate  through  the  channel  of  the  Greek 
language,  it  followed  that  the  Greeks  had  no  means 
or  opportunity  for  comparing  their  own  language 
with  the  languages  of  other  nations  ;  and,  together 
with  this  power  of  mutual  comparison,  fell  away 
the  call  and  excitement  to  vanity  upon  that  par- 
ticular subject.  Greece  was  in  the  absolute  in- 
sulation of  the  phoenix,  the  unique  of  birds,  that  dies 
without  having  felt  a  throb  of  exultation  or  a  pang 
of  jealousy,  because  it  has  exposed  its  gorgeous 
plumage  and  the  mysterious  solemnities  of  its  beauty 
only  to  the  dusky  recesses  of  Thebaic  deserts. 

Not  thus  were  the  Romans  situated.  The  Greeks, 
so  profound  and  immovable  was  their  selfconceit, 
never  in  any  generation  came  to  regard  the  Romans 
with  the  slightest  tremor  of  jealousy,  as  though  they 
were  or  ever  could  be  rivals  in  literature.  The  Ro- 
man nobles,  as  all  Greece  knew,  resorted  in  youth  to 
Athens  as  to  the  eternal  well-head  of  learning  and 
eloquence  ;  and  the  literary  or  the  forensic  efforts  of 
such  persons  were  never  viewed  as  by  possibility 
efforts  of  competition  with  their  masters,  but  simply 
as  graceful  expressions  of  homage  to  the  inimitable 
by  men  whose  rank  gave  a  value  to  this  homage. 
Cicero  and  other  Romans  of  his  day  were  egregiously 
duped  by  their  own  vanity,  when  they  received  as 
sincere  the  sycophantic  praises  of  mercenary  Greek 
»hetoricians.  No  Greek  ever  in  good  faith  admired 
a  Roman  upon  intellectual  grounds,  except  indeed 
as  Polybius  did,  whose  admiration  was  fixed  upon 
the  Roman  institutions,  not  upon  their  literature  ; 
though  even  in  his  day  the  Roman  literature  had 
already  put  forth  a  masculine  promise,  and  in  Plau* 


LAKGUIOE.  383 

tus,  at  least,  a  promise  of  unhorroioed  excellence. 
The  Greeks  were  wrong ;  the  Eomans  had  some 
things  in  their  literature  which  a  Greek  could  neither 
have  rivalled  nor  even  understood.  They  had  a  pe- 
culiar rhetoric,  for  example,  such  as  Ovid's  in  the  con- 
test for  the  arms  of  Achilles, —  such  as  Seneca's, 
which,  to  this  hour,  has  never  been  properly  exam- 
ined, and  which  not  only  has  no  parallel  in  Grecian 
literature,  but  which,  strangely  enough,  loses  its 
whole  eflFect  and  sense  when  translated  into  Greek  ; 
so  entirely  is  it  Roman  by  incommunicable  privilege 
of  genius. 

But,  if  the  Greeks  did  no  justice  to  their  Roman 
pupils,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Roman  pupils  never 
ceased  to  regard  the  Greeks  with  veneration,  or  to 
acknowledge  them  for  their  masters  in  literature : 
they  had  a  foreign  literature  before  their  eyes  chal- 
lenging continual  comparison  ;  and  this  foreign  liter- 
ature was  in  a  language  which  also  challenged  com- 
parison with  their  own.  Every  Roman  of  distinction 
understood  Greek  :  often  talked  it  fluently,  declaimed 
in  it,  and  wrote  books  in  it.  But  there  is  no  language 
without  its  own  peculiar  genius,  and  therefore  none 
without  its  separate  powers  and  advantages.  The 
Latin  language  has  in  excess  such  an  original  charac- 
ter, and  consequently  such  separate  powers.  These 
Romans  were  not  slow  to  discover.  Studying  the 
Greek  so  closely,  they  found  by  continual  collation  in 
what  quarter  lay  the  peculiar  strength  of  the  Latin. 
And,  amongst  others,  Cicero  did  himself  the  greatest 
honor,  and  almost  redeems  the  baseness  of  his  politi- 
cal conduct,  by  the  patriotic  fervor  which  he  now  and 
then  exhibits  in  defending  the  claims  of  his  native 


384  LANGUAGE. 

anguage  and  native  literature.  He  maintains  also, 
more  than  once,  and  perhaps  with  good  reason,  the 
native  superiority  of  the  Roman  mind  to  the  Grecian 
in  certain  qualities  of  racy  humor,  &c.*^^ 

Here,  namely,  in  the  case  of  Cicero,  we  have  the 
first  eminent  example  (though  he  himself  records 
some  elder  examples  amongst  his  own  countrymen) 
of  a  man  standing  up  manfully  to  support  the  pre- 
tensions of  his  mother  tongue.  And  this  might  be 
done  in  a  mere  spirit  of  pugnacious  defiance  to  the 
arrogance  of  another  nation — a  spirit  which  finds 
matter  of  quarrel  in  a  straw.  But  here  also  we  find 
the  first  example  of  a  statesman's  seriously  regarding 
a  language  in  the  light  of  a  foremost  jewel  amongst 
the  trophies  of  nationality. 

Coming  forward  to  our  own  times,  we  find  sove- 
reign rulers,  on  behalf  of  great  nations,  occasionally 
raising  disputes  which  presume  some  sense  of  the 
value  and  dignity  attached  to  a  language.  Cromwell, 
for  instance,  insisted  upon  Cardinal  Mazarine's  sur- 
rendering his  pretension  to  have  the  French  lan- 
guage used  in  a  particular  negotiation  ;  and  accord- 
ingly Latin  was  substituted.  But  this  did  not  argue 
in  Cromwell  any  real  estimation  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. He  had  been  weak  enough  to  wish  that  his 
own  life  and  annals  should  be  written  in  Latin  rathei 
than  in  English.  The  motive,  it  is  true,  might  be  to 
facilitate  the  circulation  of  the  work  amongst  the 
literati  of  the  continent.  But  vernacular  translations 
would  more  certainly  have  been  executed  all  over 
the  continent  in  the  absence  of  a  Latin  original ;  for 
this,  by  meeting  the  demand  of  foreigners  in  part 
(namely,  oi  learned  foreigners),  wovldipro  tanto  have 


LANGUAGE.  385 

lessened  the  motives  to  such  translations.  And  apart 
from  this  preference  of  a  Latin  to  a  domestic  portrait- 
ure addressing  itself  originally  to  his  own  country- 
men, or,  if  Latin  were  otherwise  the  preferable  lan- 
guage, apart  from  Cromwell's  preference  of  a  Latin 
Casaubon  to  a  Latin  Milton,  in  no  instance  did  Crom- 
well testify  any  sense  of  the  commanding  rank  due 
to  English  literature  amongst  the  contemporary^^ 
literatures  of  Christendom,  nor  any  concern  for  its 
extension. 

In  the  case  of  resisting  the  French  arrogance, 
Cromwell  had  seemed  to  express  homage  to  the 
language  of  his  country,  but  in  reality  he  had  only 
regarded  the  political  dignity  of  his  country.  A 
pretension  may  be  lighter  than  a  feather ;  and  yet  in 
behalf  of  our  country  we  do  right  to  suffer  no  inso- 
lent aggression  upon  it  by  an  enemy.  But  this 
argues  no  sincere  regard  for  that  pretension  on  its 
own  account.  We  have  known  a  sailor  to  knock  an 
Italian  down  for  speaking  disrespectfully  of  English 
tenor  voices.  The  true  and  appropriate  expression 
of  reverence  to  a  language  is  not  by  fighting  for  it,  as 
a  subject  of  national  rivalry,  but  by  taking  earnest 
pains  to  write  it  with  accuracy,  practically  to  display 
its  beauty,  and  to  make  its  powers  available  for  com- 
jiensurate  ends.  Tried  by  this  test,  which  of  the 
three  peoples  that  walk  at  the  head  of  civilization  — 
French,  Germans,  or  English  —  have  best  fulfilled  the 
duties  of  their  position  ? 

To  answer  that  the  French  only  have  been  fully 

awake  to  these  duties  !s  painfiil,  but  too  manifestly 

't  is  true.     The  French  language  possesses  the  very 

highest  degree  of  merit,  though  not  in  the  very  high- 

25 


B86  LANGUAGE. 

est  mode  of  merit ;  it  is  the  unique  language  of  the 
planet  as  an  instrument  for  giving  effect  to  the 
powers,  and  for  meeting  the  necessities  of  social 
gayety  and  colloquial  intercourse.  This  is  partly 
the  effect,  and  partly  the  cause,  of  the  social  tempera- 
ment which  distinguishes  the  French  ;  partly  follows 
the  national  disposition,  and  partly  leads  to  it.  The 
adaptation  of  the  language  to  the  people,  not  per- 
haps more  really  prominent  in  this  case  than  in 
others,  is  more  conspicuously  so  ;  and  it  may  be  in  a 
spirit  of  gratitude  for  this  genial  cooperation  in  their 
language  that  the  French  are  in  a  memorable  degree 
anxious  to  write  it  with  elegance  and  correctness. 
They  take  a  pride  in  doing  so  ;  and  it  is  remarkable 
that  grammatical  inaccuracies,  so  common  amongst 
ourselves,  and  common  even  amongst  our  literary 
people,  are  almost  unknown  amongst  the  educated 
French.*'^ 

But  mere  fidelity  to  grammar  would  leave  but  a 
negative  impression  ;  the  respect  which  the  French 
show  to  their  language  expresses  itself  chiefly  in 
their  way  of  managing  it,  that  is,  in  their  attention 
to  style  and  diction.  It  is  the  rarest  thing  possible 
to  find  a  French  writer  erring  by  sentences  too 
'ong,  too  intricate  and  loaded  with  clauses,  or  too 
(.  lumsy  in  their  structure.  The  very  highest  qualities 
of  style  are  not  much  within  the  ideal  of  French 
composition ;  but  in  the  executive  results  French 
prose  composition  usually  reveals  an  air  of  finish,  of 
iself-restraint  under  any  possible  temptation  to  des 
longueurs,  and  of  graceful  adroitness  in  the  trans- 
itions. 

Preciselj  the  reverse  of  all  this  is  found  in  the 


LANGUAGE.  387 

compositions  of  the  German,  who  is  the  ^eatest 
nuisance,  in  what  concerns  the  treatment  of  language, 
that  the  mind  of  man  is  capable  of  conceiving.  Of 
his  language  the  German  is  proud,  and  with  reason, 
for  it  is  redundantly  rich.  Even  in  its  Teutonic 
section  it  is  so  rich  as  to  be  self-suflBcing,  and  capa- 
ble; though  awkwardly,  of  dispensing  with  the  Greek 
and  Latin  counter-section.  This  independence  of 
alien  resources  has  sometimes  been  even  practically 
adopted  as  the  basis  of  a  dictionary,  and  officially 
patronized.  Some  thirty  years  ago,  the  Prussian 
government  was  said  to  have  introduced  into  the 
public  service  a  dictionary^  which  rejected  all  words 
not  purely  vernacular.  Such  a  word,  for  instance, 
as  philosophie  was  not  admissible  ;  the  indigenous 
word  weltweisheit  was  held  to  be  not  only  sufficient, 
which  it  really  is,  but  exclusively  legitimate.  Yet, 
with  all  this  scrupulosity  and  purism  of  veneration 
for  his  native  language,  to  which  he  ascribes  eveiy 
quality  of  power  and  beauty,  and  amongst  others  — 
credite  posteri  !  —  sometimes  even  vocal  beauty^  and 
euphony,  the  true  German  has  no  sense  of  grace  or 
deformity  in  the  management  of  his  language.  Style, 
diction,  the  construction  of  sentences,  are  ideas  per- 
fectly without  meaning  to  the  German  writer.  If  a 
whole  book  were  made  up  of  a  single  sentence,  all 
collateral  or  subordinate  ideas  being  packed  into  it 
as  parenthetical  intercalations, — if  this  single  sen- 
ience  should  even  cover  an  acre  of  ground,  the  true 
German  would  see  in  all  that  no  want  of  art,  would 
recognize  no  opportunities  thrown  away  for  the  dis- 
play of  beauty.  The  temple  would  in  Ms  eyes  exist, 
because  the  materials  of  the  temple  —  the  stone,  the 


888  LANGUAGE. 

lime,  the  iron,  the  timber — had  been  carted  to  the 
ground.  A  sentence,  even  when  insulated  aud 
viewed  apart  for  itself,  is  a  subject  for  complex  art  : 
even  so  far  it  is  capable  of  multiform  beauty,  and 
liable  to  a  whole  nosology  of  malconformations.  But 
it  is  in  the  relation  of  sentences,  in  what  Horace 
terms  their  "junctura,"  that  the  true  life  of  compo- 
sition resides.  The  mode  of  their  nexus, — the  way  in 
which  one  sentence  is  made  to  arise  out  of  another, 
and  to  prepare  the  opening  for  a  third, —  this  is  the 
great  loom  in  which  the  textile  process  of  the  moving 
intellect  reveals  itself  and  prospers.  Here  the  sepa- 
rate clauses  of  a  period  become  architectural  parts, 
aiding,  relieving,  supporting  each  other.  But  how 
can  any  approach  to  that  effect,  or  any  suggestion 
of  it,  exist  for  him  who  hides  and  buries  all  openings 
for  parts  and  graceful  correspondences  in  one  monot- 
onous continuity  of  period,  stretching  over  three 
octavo  pages  ?  Kant  was  a  great  man,  but  he  was 
obtuse  and  deaf  as  an  antediluvian  boulder  with 
regard  to  language  and  its  capacities.  He  has  sen- 
tences which  have  been  measured  by  a  carpenter,  and 
some  of  them  run  two  feet  eight  by  six  inches.  Now, 
a  sentence  with  that  enormous  span  is  fit  only  for  the 
use  of  a  megatherium  or  a  pre-Adamite.  Parts  so 
remote  as  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  such  a  sen- 
tence can  have  no  sensible  relation  to  each  other ; 
not  much  as  regards  their  logic,  but  none  at  all  as 
regards  their  more  sensuous  qiialities, — rhythmus, 
for  instance,  or  the  continuity  of  metaphor.  And  it 
is  clear  that,  if  the  internal  relations  of  a  sentence 
fade  under  the  extravagant  misproportion  of  its  scale 
%  fortiori  must  the  outer  relations.     If  two  figureB, 


LANGUAGE.  389 

or  other  objects,  are  meant  to  modify  each  other  vis- 
ually by  means  of  color,  of  outline,  or  of  expression, 
they  must  be  brought  into  juxtaposition,  or  at  least 
into  neighborhood.  A  chasm  between  them,  so  vast 
as  to  prevent  the  synthesis  of  the  two  objects  in  one 
coexisting  field  of  vision,  interrupts  the  play  of  all 
genial  comparison.  Periods,  and  clauses  of  pei'iods, 
modify  each  other,  and  build  up  a  whole,  then,  only 
when  the  parts  are  shown  as  parts,  cohering  and  con- 
Bpiring  to  a  common  result.  But,  if  each  part  is 
separately  so  vast  as  to  eclipse  the  disc  of  the  adja- 
cent parts,  then  substantially  they  are  separate 
wholes,  and  do  not  coalesce  to  any  joint  or  complex 
impression. 

We  English  in  this  matter  occupy  a  middle  position 
between  the  French  and  the  Germans.  Agi-eeably 
to  the  general  cast  of  the  national  character,  our 
tendency  is  to  degrade  the  value  of  the  ornamental, 
whenever  it  is  brought  before  us  under  any  sugges- 
tion of  comparison  or  rivalry  with  the  substantial  or 
grossly  useful.  Viewing  the  thoughts  as  the  substan- 
tial objects  in  a  book,  we  are  apt  to  regard  the  man- 
ner of  presenting  these  thoughts  as  a  secondary  or 
even  trivial  concern.  The  one  we  typify  as  the 
metallic  substance,  the  silver  or  gold,  which  consti- 
lutes  the  true  value,  that  cannot  perish  in  a  service 
of  plate  ;  whereas  the  style  too  generally,  in  our 
estimate,  represents  the  mere  casual  fashion  given  to 
khe  plate  by  the  artist  —  an  adjunct  that  any  change 
of  public  taste  may  degrade  into  a  positive  disadvan- 
tage. But  in  this  we  English  err  greatly  ;  and  by 
these  three  capital  oversights  : 

1.  It  is  certain  that  style,  or  (to  speak  by  the  most 


390  LANGUAOB. 

general  expression)  the  management  of  language, 
ranks  amongst  the  fine  arts,  and  is  able  therefore  to 
yield  a  separate  intellectual  pleasure  quite  apart  from 
the  interest  of  the  subject  treated.  So  far  it  is  al- 
ready one  error  to  rate  the  value  of  style  as  if  it  were 
necessarily  a  dependent  or  subordinate  thing.  On 
the  contrary,  style  has  an  absolute  value,  like  the 
product  of  any  other  exquisite  art,  quite  distinct  from 
the  value  of  the  subject  about  which  it  is  employed, 
and  irrelatively  to. the  subject;  precisely  as  the  fine 
workmanship  of  Scopas  the  Greek,  or  of  Cellini  the 
Florentine,  is  equally  valued  by  the  connoisseur, 
whether  embodied  in  bronze  or  marble,  in  an  ivory 
or  golden  vase.     But 

2.  If  we  do  submit  to  this  narrow  valuation  of 
style,  founded  on  the  interest  of  the  subject  to  which 
it  is  ministerial,  still,  even  on  that  basis,  we  English 
commit  a  capital  blunder,  which  the  Fi'ench  earnestly 
and  sincerely  escape  ;  for,  assuming  that  the  thoughts 
involve  the  primary  interest,  still  it  must  make  all 
the  difference  in  the  world  to  the  success  of  those 
thoughts,  whether  they  are  treated  in  the  way  best 
fitted  to  expel  the  doubts  or  darkness  that  may  have 
settled  upon  them  ;  and,  secondly,  in  cases  where 
the  business  is,  not  to  establish  new  convictions,  but 
to  carry  old  convictions  into  operative  life  and  power, 
whether  they  are  treated  in  the  way  best  fitted  to 
rekindle  in  the  mind  a  practical  sense  of  their  value. 
Style  has  two  separate  functions  —  first,  to  brighten 
the  intelligibility  of  a  subject  which  is  obscure  to  the 
understanding  ;  secondly,  to  regenerate  the  normal 
vower  and  impressiveness  of  a  subject  which  has 
Decome  dormant  to  the  sensibilities.    Darkness  gath 


LANGUAGB.  391 

era  upon  many  a  theme,  sometimes  from  previous 
mistreatment,  but  oftener  from  original  perplexities 
investing  its  very  nature.  Upon  the  style  it  is,  if  we 
take  that  word  in  its  largest  sense  —  upon  the  skill 
and  art  of  the  developer,  that  these  perplexities 
greatly  depend  for  their  illumination.  Look,  again, 
at  the  other  class  of  cases,  when  the  diflSculties  are 
not  for  the  understanding,  but  for  the  practical  sensi- 
bilities as  applicable  to  the  services  of  life.  The 
subject,  suppose,  is  already  understood  sufficiently  ; 
but  it  is  lifeless  as  a  motive.  It  is  not  new  light 
that  is  to  be  communicated,  but  old  torpor  that  is  to 
be  dispersed.  The  writer  is  not  summoned  to  con- 
vince, but  to  persuade.  Decaying  lineaments  are  to 
be  retraced,  and  faded  coloring  to  be  refreshed. 
Now,  these  offices  of  style  are  really  not  essentially 
below  the  level  of  those  other  offices  attached  to  the 
original  discovery  of  truth.  He  that  to  an  old  con- 
viction, long  since  inoperative  and  dead,  gives  the 
regeneration  that  carries  it  back  into  the  heart  as  a 
vital  power  of  action, —  he,  again,  that  by  new  light, 
or  by  light  trained  to  flow  through  a  new  channel, 
reconciles  to  the  understanding  a  truth  which  hitherto 
had  seemed  dark  or  doubtful, —  both  these  men  are 
really,  quoad  us  that  benefit  by  their  services,  the 
discoverers  of  the  truth.  Yet  these  results  are 
amongst  the  possible  gifts  of  style.  Light  to  see  the 
road,  power  to  advance  along  it  —  such  being  amongst 
the  promises  and  proper  functions  of  style,  it  is  a 
capital  error,  under  the  idea  of  its  ministeriality,  to 
'pidervalue  this  great  organ  of  the  advancing  intel- 
lect —  an  organ  which  is  equally  important  con- 
sidered as  a  tool  for  the  culture  and  popularization 


392  LANGUAGE. 

of  truth,  and  also  (if  it  had  no  use  at  all  in  that  way) 

as  a  mode  per  se  of  the  beautiful,  and  a  fountain  of 
intellectual  pleasure.  The  vice  of  that  appreciation, 
which  we  English  apply  to  style,  lies  in  representing 
it  as  a  mere  ornamental  accident  of  written  composi- 
tion —  a  trivial  embellishment,  like  the  mouldings  of 
furniture,  the  cornices  of  ceilings,  or  the  arabesques 
of  tea-urns.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  product  of  art 
the  rarest,  subtlest,  and  most  intellectual ;  and,  like 
other  products  of  the  fine  arts,  it  is  then  finest  when 
it  is  most  eminently  disinterested,  that  is,  most  con- 
spicuously detached  from  gross  palpable  uses.  Yet, 
in  very  many  cases,  it  really  has  the  obvious  uses  of 
that  gross  palpable  order  ;  as  in  the  cases  just  no- 
ticed, when  it  gives  light  to  the  understanding,  oi 
power  to  the  will,  removing  obscurities  from  one  set 
of  truths,  and  into  another  circulating  the  life-blood 
of  sensibility.  In  these  cases,  meantime,  the  style  is 
contemplated  as  a  thing  separable  from  the  thoughts  ; 
in  fact,  as  the  dress  of  the  thoughts  —  a  robe  that 
may  be  laid  aside  at  pleasure.     But 

3.  There  arises  a  case  entirely  different,  where 
style  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  dress  or  alien  covering, 
but  where  style  becomes  the  incarnation  of  the 
thoughts.  The  human  body  is  not  the  dress  or  ap- 
parel of  the  human  spirit ;  far  more  mj'^sterious  is  the 
mode  of  their  union.  Call  the  two  elements  A  and  B  : 
then  it  is  impossible  to  point  out  A  as  existing  aloof 
from  B,  or  vice  versa.  A  exists  in  and  through  B, 
B  exists  in  and  through  A.  No  profound  observer 
can  have  failed  to  observe  this  illustrated  in  the 
capacities  of  style.  Imagery  is  sometimes  not  the 
mere  alien  apparelling  of  a  thought,  and  of  a  nature 


LANGUAGE.  393 

to  be  detached  from  the  thought,  but  is  the  coeffi- 
cient that,  being  superadded  to  something  else,  abso- 
lutely makes  the  thought. 

In  this  third  case,  our  English  tendency  to  under- 
value style  goes  more  deeply  into  error  than  in  the 
other  two.  In  those  two  we  simply  underrate  the 
enormous  services  that  are  or  might  be  rendered  by 
style  to  the  interests  of  truth  and  human  thinking ; 
but,  in  the  third  case,  we  go  near  to  abolish  a  mode 
of  existence.  This  is  not  so  impossible  an  offence  as 
might  be  supposed.  There  are  many  ideas  in  Leib- 
nitz, in  Kant,  in  the  schoolmen,  in  Plato  at  times, 
and  certainly  in  Aristotle  (as  the  ideas  of  antiperis- 
tasis,  entelecheia,  &c.),  which  are  only  to  be  arrested 
and  realized  by  a  signal  effort  —  by  a  struggle  and  a 
nisus  both  of  reflection  and  of  large  combination. 
Now,  where  so  much  depends  upon  an  effort  —  on  a 
spasmodic  strain  —  to  fail  by  a  hair's  breadth  is  to 
collapse.  For  instance,  the  idea  involved  in  the 
word  transcendental,^  as  used  in  the  critical  philos- 
ophy of  Kant,  illustrates  the  metaphysical  relations 
of  style. 


ENGLISH  DICTIONARIES. 

It  has  already,  I  believe,  been  said  more  than  once 
in  print  that  one  condition  of  a  good  dictionary  would 
be  to  exhibit  the  history  of  each  word  ;  that  is,  to 
record  the  exact  succession  of  its  meanings.  But  the 
ph'losophic  reason  for  this  has  not  been  given;  which 
reason,  by  the  way,  settles  a  question  often  agitated, 
viz.  whether  the  true  meaning  of  a  word  be  best  ascer- 
tained from  its  etymology,  or  from  its  present  use  and 
acceptation.  Mr.  Coleridge  says,  '  the  best  explana- 
tion of  a  woi'd  is  often  that  which  is  suggested  by  hs 
derivation '  (I  give  the  substance  of  his  words  from 
memory).  Others  allege  that  we  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  primitive  meaning  of  the  word ;  that  the 
question  is  —  what  does  it  mean  now  ^  and  they  ap- 
peal, as  the  sole  authority  they  acknowledge,  to  the 
received  — 

Usus,  penes  quern  est  jus  et  norma  loquendi. 

In  what  degree  each  party  is  right,  may  be  judged 
from  this  consideration  —  that  no  word  can  ever  de- 
viate from  its  first  meaning  per  sallum  :  each  successive 
stage  of  meaning  must  always  have  been  determined 
by  that  which  preceded.  And  on  this  one  law  depends 
^he  whole  philosophy  of  the  case  :  for  it  thus  appears 


ENGLISH    DICTIONARIES.  395 

that  the  original  and  primitive  sense  of  the  word  will 
contain  virtually  all  which  can  ever  afterwards  arise : 
as  in  the  evolution-theory  of  generation,  the  whole 
series  of  births  is  represented  as  involved  in  the  firet 
parent.  Now,  if  the  evolution  of  successive  meanings 
has  gone  on  rightly,  i.  e.  by  simply  lapsing  through  a 
series  of  close  affinities,  there  can  be  no  reason  for 
recurring  to  the  primitive  meaning  of  the  word :  but, 
if  it  can  be  shown  that  the  evolution  has  been  faulty, 
t.  e.  that  the  chain  of  true  affinities  has  ever  been 
broken  through  ignorance,  then  we  have  a  right  to 
reform  the  word,  and  to  appeal  from  the  usage  ill- 
instructed  to  a  usage  better-instructed.  Whether  wo 
ought  to  exercise  this  right,  will  depend  on  a  considera- 
tion which  I  will  afterwards  notice.  Meantime  I  will 
first  give  a  few  instances  of  faulty  evolution. 

1.  Implicit.  This  word  is  now  used  in  a  most 
ignorant  way ;  and  from  its  misuse  it  has  come  to  be  a 
word  wholly  useless  :  for  it  is  now  never  coupled,  I 
think,  with  any  other  substantive  than  these  two  — 
faith  and  confidence  :  a  poor  domain  indeed  to  have 
sunk  to  from  its  original  wide  range  of  territory. 
Moreover,  when  we  say,  implicit  faith,  or  implicit 
confidence,  we  do  not  thereby  mdicate  any  specific 
kind  of  faith  and  confidence  differing  from  other  faith 
or  other  confidence  :  but  it  is  a  vague  rhetorical  word 
which  expresses  a  great  degree  of  faith  and  confidence  ; 
a  faith  that  is  unquestioning,  a  confidence  that  is  un- 
limited ;  i.  e.  in  fact,  a  faith  that  is  a  faith,  a  confi- 
dence that  is  a  confidence.  Such  a  use  of  the  word 
ought  to  be  abandoned  to  women :  doubtless,  when 
sitting  in  a  bower  in  the  month  of  May,  it  is  pleasant 
♦o  hear  from  a  lovely  mouth  — '  I  put  implicit  confi- 


396  ENGLISH    DICTIONARIES. 

dence  in  your  honor  : '  but,  though  pretty  and  becommg 
lo  such  a  mouth,  it  is  very  unfitting  to  the  mouth  of  a 
scholar :  and  I  will  be  bold  to  affirm  that  no  man,  wlio 
had  ever  acquired  a  scholar's  knowle  ige  of  the  English 
language,  has  used  the  word  in  that  lax  and  unmeaning 
way.  The  history  of"  the  word  is  this.  —  Implicit 
(from  the  Latin  implicitus,  involved  in,  folded  up)  was 
always  used  originally,  and  still  is  so  by  scholars,  as 
the  direct  antithete  of  explicit  (from  the  Latin  expUcitus, 
evolved,  unfolded  )  :  and  the  use  of  both  may  be  thus 
illustrated, 

Q.  '  Did  Mr.  A.  ever  say  that  he  would  marry  Misa 
B.  ?  '  —  A.  '  No  ;  not  explicitly  (i.  e.  in  so  many 
words)  ;  but  he  did  implicitly  —  by  showing  great  dis- 
pleasure if  she  received  attentions  from  any  other 
man ;  by  asking  her  repeatedly  to  select  furniture  for 
his  house  ;  by  consulting  her  on  his  own  plans  of  life.' 

Q.  '  Did  Epicurus  maintain  any  doctrines  such  as 
are  here  ascribed  to  him  ?  '  —  A.  '  Perhaps  not  ex 
plicitly,  either  in  words  or  by  any  other  mode  of  direct 
sanction  :  on  the  contrary,  1  believe  he  denied  them  — 
and  disclaimed  them  with  vehemence  :  but  he  main- 
tained them  implicitly  :  for  they  are  involved  in  other 
acknowledged  doctrines  of  his,  and  may  be  deduced 
from  them  by  the  fairest  and  most  irresistible  logic' 

Q.  '  Why  did  you  complain  of  the  man  ?  Had  he 
expressed  any  contempt  for  your  opinion?'  —  A. 
'  Yes,  he  had:  not  explicit  contempt,  I  admit;  for  he 
never  opened  his  stupid  mouth ;  but  implicitly  he  ex- 
Dressed  the  utmost  that  he  could :  for,  when  I  had 
spoKen  two  hours  against  the  old  newspaper,  and  in 
favor  of  the  new  one,  he  went  instantly  and  put  his 
aame  down  as  a  subscriber  to  the  old  one.' 


ENGLISH     DICTIONARIES.  397 

Q.  '  Did  Mr.  approve  of  that  gentleman's  con- 

uact  and  way  of  life?'  —  A.  'I  don't  know  that  I 
ever  heard  him  speak  about  it :  but  he  seemed  to  give 
It  his  implicit  approbation  by  allowing  both  his  sons  to 
associate  with  him  when  the  complaints  ran  highest 
against  him.' 

These  instances  may  serve  to  illustrate  the  original 
use  of  the  word ;  which  use  has  been  retained  from 
the  sixteenth  century  down  to  our  own  days  by  an 
uninterrupted  chain  of  writers.  In  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury this  use  was  indeed  nearly  effaced ;  but  still  in 
the  first  half  of  that  century  it  was  retained  by  Saun- 
derson  the  Cambridge  professor  of  mathematics  (see 
his  Algebra,  &c.),  with  three  or  four  others,  and  in 
the  latter  half  by  a  man  to  whom  Saunderson  had 
some  resemblance  in  spring  and  elasticity  of  under- 
standing, viz.  by  Edmund  Burke.  Since  his  day  I 
know  of  no  writers  who  have  avoided  the  slang  and 
unmeaning  use  of  the  word,  excepting  Messrs.  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth ;  both  of  whom  (but  especially  the 
last)  have  been  remarkably  attentive  to  the  scholar- 
like *  use  of  words,  and  to  the  history  of  their  own 
languacre. 

Thus  much  for  the  primitive  use  of  the  word  implicit. 

*  Among  the  most  shocking  of  the  unscholarlike  barbarisms, 
now  prevalent,  I  must  notice  the  use  of  the  word  '  nice  '  La  an 
objective  instead  of  a  subjective  sense  :  '  7iice  '  does  not  and  can- 
not express  a  quality  of  the  object,  but  merely  a  quality  of  the 
subject :  yet  we  hear  daily  of  '  a  very  nice  letter '  —  'a  nice 
young  lady,'  &c.,  meaning  a  letter  or  a  young  lady  that  it  is 
pleasant  to  contemplate  :  but  '  a  nice  young  lady  '  —  means  a 
Castidious  young  lady  ;  and  '  a  nice  letter  '  ought  to  mean  a  letter 
that  is  very  delicate  in  its  rating  and  in  the  choice  of  its 
company. 


398  ENGLISH    DICTIONARIES. 

Now,  with  regard  to  the  history  of  its  transition  into 
its  present  use,  it  is  briefly  this ;  and  it  will  appear  at 
once,  that  it  has  arisen  through  ignorance.  When  it 
was  objected  to  a  papist  that  his  church  exacted  an 
assent  to  a  great  body  of  traditions  and  doctrines  to 
which  it  was  impossible  that  the  great  majority  could 
be  qualified,  either  as  respected  time  —  or  knowledge 
—  or  culture  of  the  understanding,  to  give  any  reason- 
able assent,  —  the  answer  was  :  '  Yes  ;  but  that  sort 
of  assent  is  not  required  of  a  poor  uneducated  man ; 
all  that  he  has  to  do  —  is  to  believe  in  the  church : 
he  is  to  have  faith  in  her  faith :  by  that  act  he  adopts 
for  his  own  whatsoever  the  church  believes,  though  he 
may  never  have  heard  of  it  even  :  his  faith  is  implicit, 
i.  e.  mvolved  and  wrapped  up  in  the  faith  of  the 
church,  which  faith  he  firmly  believes  to  be  the  true 
faith  upon  the  conviction  he  has  that  the  church  is 
preserved  from  all  possibility  of  erring  by  the  spirit 
of  God.'  *  Now,  as  this  sort  of  believing  by  proxy  or 
implicit  belief  (in  which  the  belief  was  not  immediate 
in  the  thing  proposed  to  the  belief,  but  in  the  authority 
of  another  person  who  believed  in  that  thing  and  thus 
mediately  in  the  thing  itself)  was  constantly  attacked 
by  the  learned  assailants  of  popery,  —  it  naturally 
happened  that   many  unlearned  readers  of  these  pro- 

*  Thus  Milton,  who  (in  common  with  his  contemporaries) 
always  uses  the  word  accurately,  speaks  of  Ezekiel  '  swallowing 
his  implicit  roll  of  knowledge  '  —  i.  e.  coming  to  the  knowledge 
of  many  truths  not  separately  and  in  detail,  but  by  the  act  of 
arriving  at  some  one  master  truth  which  involved  all  the  rest.  — 
So  again,  if  any  man  or  government  were  to  suppress  a  book, 
that  man  or  government  might  justly  be  reproached  as  the  im- 
plicit destroyer  of  all  the  wisdom  atid  virtue  that  might  iiavj 
been  the  remote  products  of  that  book. 


ENGLISH    DICTIONARIES.  390 

teslant  polemics  caught  at  a  phrase  which  was  so  much 
bandied  between  the  two  parties :  the  spirit  of  the 
context  sufficiently  explained  to  them  that  it  was  used 
by  protestants  as  a  term  of  reproach,  and  indicated  a 
faith  that  was  an  erroneous  faith  by  being  too  easy  — 
too  submissive  —  and  too  passive  :  but  the  particular 
mode  of  this  erroneousness  they  seldom  came  to 
understand,  as  learned  writers  naturally  employed  the 
term  without  explanation,  presuming  it  to  be  known  to 
those  whom  they  addressed.  Hence  these  ignorant 
readers  caught  at  the  last  result  of  the  phrase  '  im- 
plicit faith '  rightly,  truly  supposing  it  to  imply  a 
resigned  and  unquestioning  faith ;  but  they  missed  the 
whole  immediate  cause  of  meaning  by  which  only  the 
word  '  implicit '  could  ever  have  been  entitled  to  ex- 
press that  result. 

I  have  allowed  myself  to  say  so  much  on  this  word 
'  implicit,'  because  the  history  of  the  mode  by  which 
its  true  meaning  was  lost  applies  almost  to  all  other 
corrupted  words  —  mutatis  mutandis  :  and  the  amount 
of  it  may  be  collected  into  this  formula,  —  that  the 
result  of  the  word  is  apprehended  and  retained,  but  the 
schematismus  by  which  that  result  was  ever  reached  is 
lost.  This  is  the  brief  theory  of  all  corruption  of 
words.  The  word  schematismus  I  have  unwillingly 
used  because  no  other  expresses  my  meaning.  So 
gr3at  and  extensive  a  doctrine  however  lurks  in  this 
word,  that  I  defer  the  explanation  of  it  to  a  separate 
article.  Meantime  a  passable  sense  of  the  word  will 
occur  to  every  body  who  reads  Greek.  I  now  go  on 
to  a  few  more  instances  of  words  that  have  forfeited 
their  original  meaning  through  the  ignorance  of  those 
who  used  them. 


400  ENGLISH    DICTIONARIES. 

'  Punctual.''  This  word  is  now  confined  to  the 
meagre  denoting  of  accuracy  in  respect  to  time  — 
fidelity  to  the  precise  moment  of  an  appointment. 
But  originally  it  was  just  as  often,  and  just  as  reason- 
ably, applied  to  space  as  to  time  ;  '  I  cannot  punctually 
determine  the  origin  of  the  Danube  ;  but  I  know  in 
general  the  district  in  which  it  rises,  and  that  its 
fountam  is  near  that  of  the  Rhine.'  Not  only,  however, 
was  it  applied  to  time  and  space,  but  it  had  a  laige 
and  very  elegant  figurative  use.  Thus  in  the  History 
of  the  Royal  Society  by  Sprat  (an  author  who  was 
finical  and  nice  in  his  use  of  words)  —  I  remember  a 
sentence  to  this  effect :  '  the  Society  gave  punctual 
directions  for  the  conducting  of  experiments ; '  i.  e. 
directions  which  descended  to  the  minutise  and  lowest 
details.  Again  in  the  once  popular  romance  of  Paris- 
mus  Prince  of  Bohemia  —  '  She '  (I  forget  who)  '  made 
a  punctual  relation  of  the  whole  matter ; '  i.  e.  a  rela- 
tion which  was  perfectly  circumstantial  and  true  to 
the  minutest  features  of  the  case. 


DRYDEN'S    HEXASTICH. 


It  is  a  remarkable  fact,  that  the  very  finest  epigram 
in  the  English  language  happens  also  to  be  the  worst. 
Epigram  I  call  it  in  the  austere  Greek  sense  ;  which 
thus  far  resembled  our  modern  idea  of  an  epigram,  that 
something  pointed  and  allied  to  wit  was  demanded  in 
the  management  of  the  leading  thought  at  its  close, 
but  otherwise  nothing  tending  towards  the  comic  or 
the  ludicrous.  The  epigram  I  speak  of  is  the  well- 
known  one  of  Dryden  dedicated  to  the  glorification 
of  Milton.  It  is  irreproachable  as  regards  its  severe 
brevity.  Not  one  word  is  there  that  could  be  spared  ; 
nor  could  the  wit  of  man  have  cast  the  movement  of 
the  thought  into  a  better  mould.  There  are  three 
couplets.  In  the  first  couplet  we  are  reminded  of  the 
fact  that  this  earth  had,  in  three  different  stages  of  its 
development,  given  birth  to  a  trinity  of  transcendent 
poets;  meaning  narrative  poets,  or,  even  more  nar- 
rowly, epic  poets.  The  duty  thrown  upon  the  second 
couplet  is  to  characterize  these  three  poets,  and  to 
value  them  against  each  other,  but  in  such  terms  as 
that,  whilst  nothing  less  than  the  very  highest  praise 
should  be  assigned  to  the  two  elder  poets  in  this 
26 


402  drydkn's  hexastich. 

i,riniiy  —  the  Greek  and  the  Roman  —  nevertheless, 
by  some  dexterous  artifice,  a  higher  praise  than  the 
highest  should  suddenly  unmask  itself,  and  drop,  as 
It  were,  like  a  diadem  from  the  clouds  upon  the  brows 
of  their  English  competitor.  In  the  kind  of  expectation 
raised,  and  in  the  extreme  difficulty  of  adequately 
meeting  this  expectation,  there  was  pretty  much  the 
same  challenge  offered  to  Dry  den  as  was  offered, 
somewhere  about  the  same  time,  to  a  British  ambassa- 
dor when  dining  with  his  political  antagonists.  One 
of  these  —  the  ambassador  of  France  —  had  proposed 
to  drink  his  master,  Louis  XIV,,  under  the  character 
of  the  sun,  who  dispensed  life  and  light  to  the  whole 
political  system.  To  this  there  was  no  objection ; 
and  immediately,  by  way  of  intercepting  any  further 
draughts  upon  the  rest  of  the  solar  system,  the  Dutch 
ambassador  rose,  and  proposed  the  health  of  their  high 
mightinesses  the  Seven  United  States,  as  the  moon  ana 
six  *  planets,  who  gave  light  in  the  absence  of  the  sun. 
The  two  foreign  ambassadors,  Monsieur  and  Mynheer, 
secretly  enjoyed  the  mortification  of  their  English 
brother,  who  seemed  to  be  thus  left  in  a  state  of 
bankruptcy,  '  no  funds '  being  available  for  retaliation, 
or  so  they  fancied.  But  suddenly  our  British  repre- 
.sentative  toasted  his  master  as  Joshua,  the  son  of  Nun 
that  made  the  sun  and  moon  stand  still.  All  had 
seemed  lost  for  England,  when  in  an  instant  of  time 
both  her  antagonists  were  checkmated.  Dryden  as- 
sumed something  of  the  same  position.  He  gave 
away  the  supreme  jewels  in  his  exchequer  ;  apparently 
nothing   remained    behind  ;    all    was    exhausted.      T« 

•  ''  Six  planets : '  —  No  more  had  then  been  discovered. 


drtden's  hexastich.  403 

Homer  he  gave  A  ;  to  Virgil  he  gave  B  ;  and,  behold  ! 
after  these  vk^ere  given  away,  there  remained  nothing 
at  all  that  would  not  have  been  a  secondary  praise. 
But,  in  a  moment  of  time,  by  giving  A  and  B  to 
Milton,  at  one  sling  of  his  victorious  arm  he  raised 
him  above  Homer  by  the  whole  extent  of  B,  and  above 
Virgil  by  the  whole  extent  of  A.  This  felicitou?  eva- 
sion of  the  embarrassment  is  accomplished  in  the 
second  couplet ;  and,  finally,  the  third  couplet  winds 
up  with  graceful  effect,  by  making  a  resume^  or  recapi- 
tulation of  the  logic  concerned  in  the  distribution  of 
prizes  just  announced.  Nature,  he  says,  had  it  not  in 
her  power  to  provide  a  third  prize  separate  from  the 
first  and  second  ;  her  resource  was,  to  join  the  first 
and  second  in  combination  :  '  To  make  a  third,  she 
joined  the  former  two.' 

Such  is  the  abstract  of  this  famous  epigram  ;  and, 
judged  simply  by  the  outline  and  tendency  of  the 
thought,  it  merits  all  the  vast  popularity  which  it  has 
earned.  But  in  the  meantime,  it  is  radically  vicious 
as  regards  the  filling  in  of  this  outline  ;  for  the  par- 
ticular quality  in  which  Homer  is  accredited  with  the 
pre-eminence,  viz.,  loftiness  of  thought.,  happens  to  be 
a  mere  variety  of  expression  for  that  qualitj',  viz. 
majesty.,  in  which  the  pre-eminence  is  awarded  to 
Virgil.  Homer  excels  Virgil  in  the  very  point  in 
which  lies  Virgil's  superiority  to  Homer ;  and  that 
synthesis,  by  means  of  which  a  great  triumph  is 
resei-ved  to  Milton,  becomes  obviously  impossible, 
when  it  is  perceived  that  the  supposed  analytic 
elements  of  this  synthesis  are  blank  reiterations  of 
each  other 

Exceedingly  s'rikmg   it    is,   that   a  thought   shouid 


404  drtden's  hexastich. 

have  prospered  for  one  hundred  and  seventy  years, 
which,  on  the  slightest  steadiness  of  examination,  turns 
out  to  be  no  thought  at  all,  but  mere  blank  vacuity. 
There  is,  however,  this  justification  of  the  case,  that 
the  mould,  the  set  of  channels,  into  which  the  metal  of 
the  thought  is  meant  to  run,  really  has  the  felicity 
which  it  appears  to  have :  the  form  is  perfect ;  and  it 
is  merely  in  the  matter,  in  the  accidental  filling  up  of 
the  mould,  that  a  fault  has  been  committed.  Had  the 
Virgilian  point  of  excellence  been  loveliness  instead  of 
majesty,  or  any  word  whatever  suggesting  the  common 
antithesis  of  sublimity  and  beauty ;  or  had  it  been 
power  on  the  one  side,  matched  against  grace  on 
the  other,  the  true  lurking  tendency  of  the  thought 
would  have  been  developed,  and  the  sub-conscious 
purpose  of  the  epigram  would  have  fulfilled  itself  to 
the  letter. 

N.  B.  —  It  is  not  meant  that  loftiness  of  thought 
and  majesty  are  expressions  so  entirely  interchange- 
Able,  as  that  no  shades  of  diflference  could  be  sug- 
gested ;  it  is  enough  that  these  '  shades '  are  not 
substantial  enough,  or  broad  enough,  to  support  the 
weight  of  opposition  which  the  epigram  assigns  tc 
them.  Grace  and  elegance.,  for  instance,  are  far  from 
being  in  all  relations  synonymous ;  but  they  are  so  tc 
the  full  extent  of  any  purposes  concerned  in  this 
epigram.  Nevertheless,  it  is  probable  enough  thai 
Drj'den  had  moving  in  his  thoughts  a  relation  of  the 
word  majesty,  which,  if  developed,  would  have  done 
justice  to  his  meaning.  It  was,  perhaps,  the  decorum 
and  sustained  dignity  of  the  composition  —  the  work- 
manship apart  from  the  native  grandeur  of  the  ma- 
terials—  the  majestic  style  of  the  artistic  treatment  af 


dryden's  hexastich.  405 

distinguished  from  the  original  creative  power  —  which 
Dryden,  the  translator  of  the  Roman  poet,  familiar 
therefore  with  his  weakness  and  with  his  strength, 
meant  in  this  place  to  predicate  as  characteristically 
■observable  in  Virgil. 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR* 


JNoBODY  in  this  generation  reads  The  Spectator, 
There  are,  however,  several  people  still  surviving 
who  have  read  No.  1  ;  in  which  No.  1  a  strange  mis- 
take is  made.  It  is  there  asserted,  as  a  general 
affection  of  human  nature,  that  it  is  impossible  to 
read  a  book  with  satisfaction  until  one  has  ascertained 
whether  the  author  of  it  be  tall  or  short,  corpulent  or 
thin,  and,  as  to  complexion,  whether  he  be  a  "black'' 
man  (which,  in  the  Spectator'' s  time,  was  the  absurd 
expression  for  a  swarthy  man),  or  a  fair  man,  or  a 
sallow  man,  or  perhaps  a  green  man,  which  Southey 
affirmed*^'  to  be  the  proper  description  of  many  stout 
artificers  in  Birmingham,  too  much  given  to  work  in 
metallic  fumes ;  on  which  account  the  name  of  Southey 
IS  an  abomination  to  this  day  in  certain  furnaces  of 
Warwickshire.  But  can  anything  be  more  untrue  than 
this  Spectatorial  doctrine  ?  Did  ever  the  youngest  of 
female  novel  readers,  on  a  sultry  day,  decline  to  eat  a 
bunch  of  grapes  until  she  knew  whether  the  fruiterer 
were  a  good-looking  man  ?  Which  of  us  ever  heard 
R  stranger  inquiring   for  a   "  Guide  to    the    Trosachs," 

*  The  Works  of  Walter  Savage  Landor.     2  vols. 


NOTES  OS   WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 


407 


Dut  saying,  "  I  scruple,  however,  to  pay  for  this  book, 
until   I  irnow  whether   the   author  is   heather-lecrged." 
On  this    principle,    if  any  such  principle  prevailed,   we 
authors  should  be  liable  to  as  strict  a  revision  of  our 
physics  before  having  any  right  to  be  read,  as   we  all 
are  before  having  our   lives    insured  from  the  medical 
advisers  of  insurance  offices ;  fellows  that  examine  one 
with  stethescopes ;  that  pinch  one,  that  actually  punch 
one  in  the  ribs,  until  a  man  becomes  savage,  and  — m 
case  the   insurance   should  miss  fire  in  consequence  of 
the    medical    report  —  speculates    on   the    propriety    of 
prosecuting   the    medical   ruffian   for  an    assault,  for  a 
most  unprovoked  assault  and   battery,  and,  if  possible, 
including  in  the  indictment  the  now  odious   insurance 
office    a°s   an    accomplice    before    the    fact.     Meantime 
the  odd  thing  is,  not  that  Addison  should  have  made 
a  mistake,  but  that  he   and  his  readers  should,  in  this 
mistake,  have  recognized  a  hidden  truth,— the  sudden 
illumination  of  a    propensity  latent   in    all   people,  but 
now  first  exposed  ;  for  it  happens  that  there  really  «  a 
propensitv  in  all   of  us,   ver>^   like    what    Addison    de- 
scribes    very    different,    and  yet,    after   one    correction 
the    very   same.     No    reader   cares  about   an    author's 
persor.  before  reading  his  book  ;  it  is  after  reading  it, 
md    supposing   the    book   to    reveal    something   of  the 
writer's  moral  nature,  as  modifying  his  intellect ;  it  is 
•or  his  fun,  his  fancy,  his    sadness,  possibly  his  crazi- 
ness,  that  any  reader  cares  about  seeing  the  author^  in 
person.      A^fflicted  with  the  very  satyriasis  of  curiosity 
no   man    ever  wished    to  see    the    author  of  a   Ready 
Reckmier,   or   of    a   treatise    on   the   Agistment    Tithe 
^1    on   +lie    Present    deplorable    Dry-rot    in    Potatoes. 


i08  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

"  Bundle  off,  sir,  as  fast  as  you  can,"  the  most  diligent 
leader  would  say  to  such  an  author,  in  case  he  insisted 
on  submitting  his  charms  to  inspection.  "  I  have  had 
quite  enough  distress  of  mind  from  reading  your 
works,  without  needing  the  additional  dry-rot  of  your 
bodily  presence."  Neither  does  any  man,  on  descend- 
ing from  a  railway  train,  turn  to  look  whether  the 
carriage  in  which  he  has  ridden  happens  to  be  a  good- 
looking  carriage,  or  wish  for  an  introduction  to  the 
coach-maker.  Satisfied  that  the  one  has  not  broken 
his  bones,  and  that  the  other  has  no  writ  against  his 
person,  he  dismisses  with  the  same  frigid  scowl  both  the 
carriage  and  the  author  of  its  existence. 

But,  with  respect  to  Mr.  Landor,  as  at  all  connected 
with  this  reformed  doctrine  of  the  Spectator,  a  diffi- 
culty arises.  He  is  a  man  of  great  genius,  and,  as 
such,  he  ought  to  interest  the  public.  More  than  enough 
appears  of  his  strong,  eccentric  nature,  through  every 
page  of  his  now  extensive  writings,  to  win,  amongst 
those  who  have  read  him,  a  corresponding  interest  in 
all  that  concerns  him  personally ;  in  his  social  rela 
tions,  in  his  biography,  in  his  manners,  in  his  appear- 
ance. Out  of  two  conditions  for  attracting  a  personal 
interest,  he  has  powerfully  realized  one.  His  moral 
nature,  shining  with  colored  light  through  the  crystal 
s'hrine  of  his  thoughts,  will  not  allow  of  your  forgetting 
.i.  A  sunset  of  Claude,  or  a  dying  dolphin  can  be 
forgotten,  and  generally  is  forgotten  ;  but  not  the  fiery 
radiations  of  a  human  spirit  built  by  nature  to  animate 
a  leader  in  storms,  a  martyr,  a  national  reformer,  an 
irch-rebel,  as  circumstances  might  dictate,  but  whom 
too  much  wealth,'^  and  the  accidents  of  education,  have 


NOTES   ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  409 

»*urned  aside  into  a  contemplative  recluse.  Had  Mr. 
Landor,  therefore,  been  read  in  any  extent  answering 
to  his  merits,  he  must  have  become,  for  the  English 
public,  an  object  of  prodigious  personal  interest.  We 
should  have  had  novels  upon  him,  lampoons  upon  him, 
libels  upon  him;  he  would  have  been  shown  up  dra- 
matically on  the  stage  ;  he  would,  according  to  the  old 
joke,  have  been  "  traduced  "  in  French,  and  also  "  over- 
set "  in  Dutch.  Meantime  he  has  not  been  read.  It 
would  be  an  affectation  to  think  it.  Many  a  writer  is, 
by  the  sycophancy  of  literature,  reputed  to  be  read, 
whom  in  all  Europe  not  six  eyes  settle  upon  through 
the  revolving  year.  Literature,  with  its  cowardly  false- 
hoods, exhibits  the  largest  field  of  conscious  Phrygian 
adulation  that  human  life  has  ever  exposed  to  the  de- 
rision of  the  heavens.  Demosthenes,  for  instance,  or 
Plato,  is  not  read  to  the  extent  of  twenty  pages  annu- 
ally by  ten  people  in  Europe.  The  sale  of  their  works 
would  not  account  for  three  readers ;  the  other  six  or 
seven  are  generally  conceded  as  possibilities  furnished 
by  the  great  public  libraries.  But,  then,  Walter  Savage 
Landor,  though  writing  a  little  in  Latin,  and  a  very 
little  in  Italian,  does  not  write  at  all  in  Greek.  So  far 
\e  has  some  advantage  over  Plato  ;  and,  if  he  writes 
chiefly  in  dialogue,  which  few  people  love  to  read  any 
more  than  novels  in  the  shape  of  letters,  that  is  a  crime 

'ommon  to   both.     So   that  he  has    the    d I's  luck 

und  his  own,  all  Plato's  chances,  and  one  of  his  own 
beside  —  namely,  his  English.  Still,  it  is  no  use  count- 
mg  chances  ;  facts  are  the  thing.  And  printing-presses, 
whether  of  Europe  or  of  England,  bear  witness  that 
neither  Plato  nor  Landor   is  a  marketable  commodity 


410  NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

In  fact,  these  two  men  resemble  each  other  in  more 
particulars  than  it  is  at  present  necessary  to  say, 
Especially  they  were  both  inclined  to  be  luxurious  ■ 
both  had  a  hankering  after  purple  and  fine  linen 
both  hated  "  filthy  dowlas  "  with  the  hatred  of  Falstaff 
whether  in  apparelling  themselves  or  their  diction ;  and 
both  bestowed  pains  as  elaborate  upon  the  secret  art 
of  a  dialogue,  as  a  lapidary  would  upon  ^e  cutting  of  a 
sultan's  rubies. 

But  might  not  a  man  build  a  reputation  on  the  basis 
of  not  being  read  ?  To  be  read  is  undoubtedly  some- 
thing :  to  be  read  by  an  odd  million  or  so,  is  a  sort  of 
feather  in  a  man's  cap ;  but  it  is  also  a  distinction  that 
he  has  been  read  absolutely  by  nobody  at  all.  There 
have  been  cases,  and  one  or  two  in  modern  times, 
where  an  author  could  point  to  a  vast  array  of  his  own 
works,  concerning  which  no  evidence  existed  that  so 
much  as  one  had  been  opened  by  human  hand,  oi 
glanced  at  by  human  eye.  That  was  awful ;  such  a 
sleep  of  pages  by  thousands  in  one  eternal  darkness, 
never  to  be  visited  by  light ;  such  a  rare  immunity 
from  the  villanies  of  misconstruction  ;  such  a  Sabbath 
from  the  impertinencies  of  critics !  You  shuddered 
to  reflect  that,  for  anything  known  to  the  contrary, 
iliere  might  lurk  jewels  of  truth  explored  in  vain,  or 
treasure  forever  intercepted  to  the  interests  of  man. 
But  such  a  sublimity  supposes  total  defect  of  readers  ; 
whereas  it  can  be  proved  against  Mr.  Landor,  that  he 
has  been  read  by  at  least  a  score  of  people,  all  wide 
awake  ;  and  if  any  treason  is  buried  in  a  page  of  his 
*hank  Heaven,  by  this  time  it  must  have  been  found 
out  and    reported  to   the  authorities.     So   that  neither 


NOTES    ON    ■WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  411 

:an  Landor  plead  the  unlimited  popularity  of  a  novel- 
ist, aided  by  the  interest  of  a  tale,  and  by  an  artist, 
nor  the  total  obscuration  of  a  Gennan  metaphysician. 
Neither  do  mobs  read  him,  as  they  do  M.  Sue  ;  nor  do 
all  men  turn  away  their  eyes  from  him,  as  they  do  from 
Hegel.«3 

This,   however,  is  true  only  of  Mr.   Landor's   prose 
works.    His  first  work  was  a  poem,  namely,  Gebir    and 
it  had  the  sublime  distinction,  for  some  time,  of  having 
enjoyed   only  two    readers;  which  two   were   Southey 
and  myself.     It  was  on  first  entering  at  Oxford  that  I 
found    "Gebir"   printed    and     (nominally)    published; 
whereas,  in  fact,  all    its   advertisements    of  birth   and 
continued   existence  were  but  so  many  notifications  of 
its    intense    privacy.     Not    knowing    Southey   at   that 
time,  I  vainly  conceited  myself  to  be  the  one  sole  pur- 
chaser   and    reader    of    this    poem.     I    even    fancied 
myself    to    have    been   pointed    out   in    the    streets    of 
Oxford,  where   the  Landors  had  been   well  known  in 
times  preceding  my  own,  as  the  one   inexplicable   man 
authentically   known   to  possess   "Gebir,"    or   even   (it 
might  be  whispered  mysteriously)   to  have  read  "  Ge- 
bir."    It  was  not  clear  but  this  reputation  might  stand 
in   lieu    of    any   independent   fame,    and    might    raise 
me  to  literary  distinction.     The   preceding   generation 
had   greatly  esteemed  the   man  called   "  Single-Speech 
Hamilton ;  "  not  at  all  for  the  speech   (which,  though 
good,  very  few  people  had   read),  but  entirely  for  the 
supposed   fact   that   he  had  exhausted  himself  in  that 
,ne    speech,  and  had   become    physically   incapable   of 
making  a  second  ;  so   that  afterwards,  when  he  really 
iid  make  a  second,  everybody  was  incredulous;  urtil 


412       NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

the  thing  being  past  denial,  naturally  the  world  was 
disgusted,  and  most  people  dropped  his  acquaintance. 
To  be  a  Mono-Gebirist  was  quite  as  good  a  title  to 
notoriety ;  and  five  years  after,  when  I  found  that  I 
had  "  a  brother  near  the  throne,"  namely,  Southey, 
mortification  would  have  led  me  willingly  to  resign  alto- 
gether in  his  favor.  Shall  I  make  the  reader  acquainted 
with  the  story  of  Gebir  ? 

Gebir  is  the  king  of  Gibraltar;  which,  however,  it 
would  be  an  anachronibm  to  call  Gibraltar,  since  it 
drew  that  name  from  this  very  Gebir;  and  doubtless, 
by  way  of  honor  to  his  memory.  Mussulmans  tell  a 
different  story ;  but  who  cares  for  what  is  said  by 
infidel  dogs  ?  King,  then,  let  us  call  him  of  Calpe  ; 
and  a  very  good  king  he  is  ;  young,  brave,  of  upright 
intentions ;  but  being  also  warlike,  and  inflamed  by 
popular  remembrances  of  ancient  wrongs,  he  resolves 
to  seek  reparation  from  the  children's  children  of  the 
wrong-doers ;  and  he  weighs  anchor  in  search  of  Mr. 
Pitt's  "  indemnity  for  the  past,"  though  not  much  re- 
garding that  right  honorable  gentleman's  "  security  for 
the  future."  Egypt  was  the  land  that  sheltered  the 
wretches  that  represented  the  ancestors  that  had  done 
the  wrong.  To  Egypt,  therefore,  does  king  Gebir  steer 
his  expedition,  which  counted  ten  thousand  picked 
"nen  • 

"  Incenst 


By  meditating  on  primeval  wrongs, 

He  blew  his  battle-horn  ;  at  which  uprose 

Whole  nations  :  here  ten  thousand  of  most  might 

He  called  aloud  ;  and  soon  Charoba  saw 

His  dark  helm  hover  o'er  the  land  of  Nile." 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOE.       413 

W"Lo  is  Charoba?  As  respects  the  reader,  she  is  the 
neroine  of  the  poem ;  as  respects  Egypt,  she  is  queen 
Dy  the  grace  of  God,  defender  of  the  faith,  and  so 
fortli.  Young  and  accustomed  to  unlimited  obedience, 
how  could  she  be  otherwise  than  alarmed  by  the 
descent  of  a  host  far  more  martial  than  her  own  effem- 
inate people,  and  assuming  a  religious  character  — 
avengers  of  wrong  in  some  forgotten  age  ?  In  hex 
trepidation,  she  turns  for  aid  and  counsel  to  her  nurse 
^alica.  Dalica,  by  the  way,  considered  as  a  word,  is 
I  dactyle ,  that  is,  you  must  not  lay  the  accent  on  the 
i,  but  on  the  first  syllable.  Dalica,  considered  as  a 
woman,  is  about  as  bad  a  one  as  even  Egypt  could 
furnish.  She  is  a  thorough  gypsy ;  a  fortune-teller, 
and  something  worse,  in  fact.  She  is  a  sorceress, 
"  stiff  in  opinion  ;  "  and  it  needs  not  Pope's  authority  to 

infer  that of  course  she  "  is  always  in  the  wrong." 

By  her  advice,  but  for  a  purpose  known  best  to  herself, 
an  interview  is  arranged  between  Charoba  and  the 
invading  monarch.  At  this  interview,  the  two  youth- 
ful sovereigns,  Charoba  the  queen  of  hearts  and  Gebir 
the  king  of  clubs,  fall  irrevocably  in  love  with  each 
other.  There  's  an  end  of  club  law  ;  and  Gebir  is  ever 
afterwards  disarmed.  But  Dalica,  that  wicked  Dalica, 
that  sad  old  dactyle,  who  sees  everything  clearly  that 
happens  to  be  twenty  years  distant,  cannot  see  a  pike- 
staff if  it  is  close  before  her  nose ;  and  of  course  she 
mistakes  Charoba's  agitations  of  love  for  paroxysms  of 
anger.  Charoba  is  herself  partly  to  blame  for  this ; 
tut  you  must  excuse  her.  The  poor  child  readily 
confided  her  terrors  to  Dalica ;  but  how  can  she  be 
fxpected   to   make   a   love  confidante   of  a    tawny  old 


414  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

Witch  like  her  ?  Upon  this  mistake,  however,  proceeds 
the  whole  remaining  plot.  Dr.  Dalica  (which  means 
doctor  D.,  and  by  no  means  dear  D.),  having  totally 
mistaken  the  symptoms,  the  diagnosis,  the  prognosis, 
and  everything  that  ends  in  osis.  necessarily  mistakes 
also  the  treatment  of  the  case,  and,  like  some  other 
doctors,  failing  to  make  a  cure,  covers  up  her  blunders 
by  a  general  slaughter.  She  visits  her  sister,  a  sorceress 
more  potent  than  herself,  living 

"  Deep  in  the  wilderness  of  woe,  Masar." 

Between  them  they  concert  hellish  incantations.  From 
these  issues  a  venomous  robe,  like  that  of  the  centaui 
Nessus.  This,  at  a  festal  meeting  between  the  two 
nations  and  their  princes,  is  given  by  Charoba  to  hei 
lover  —  her  lover,  but  as  yet  not  recognized  as  such  by 
her,  nor,  until  the  moment  of  his  death,  avowed  as 
such  by  himself.  Gebir  dies  —  the  accursed  robe,  dipped 
in  the  "  viscous  poison  *  exuding  from  the  gums  of  the 
gray  cerastes,  and  tempered  by  other  venomous  juices 
of  plant  and  animal,  proves  too  much  for  his  rocky 
constitution  —  Gibraltar  is  found  not  impregnable  — 
the  blunders  of  Dalica,  the  wicked  nurse,  and  the  arts 
of  her  sister  Myrthyr,  the  wicked  witch,  are  found  too 
potent;  and  in  one  moment  the  union  of  two  nations, 
with  the  happiness  of  two  sovereigns,  is  wrecked  for- 
ever. The  closing  situation  of  the  parties  —  monarch 
and  monarch,  nation  and  nation,  youthful  king  and 
youthful  queen,  dying  or  despairing  —  nation  and 
nation  that  had  been  reconciled,  starting  asunder  once 
again  amidst  festival  and  flowers  —  these  objects  are 
scenically   efi'ective.     The   conception  of  the   grouping 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       415 

IS  good-  the  mise  en  scene  is  good;  but,  from  want  of 
pains-taking,  not  sufficiently  brought  out  into  strong 
relief;  and  the  dying  words  of  Gebir,  which  wind  up 
the  whole,  are  too  bookish  ;  they  seem  to  be  part  of 
some  article  which  he  had  been  writing  for  the  Gibraltar 

Quarterly. 

There  are  two  episodes,  composing  jointly  about  two- 
sevenths  of  the  poem,  and  by  no  means  its  weakest 
parts.  One  describes  the  descent  of  Gebir  to  Hades 
His  guide  is  a  man  — who  is  this  man  ? 

««  Living  —  they  called  Wm  Aroar.'- 

Ishe  woHiving,  then?     No.     Is  he  dead,  then  ?     No, 
nor  dead  either.     Poor  Aroar  cannot  live,  and  cannot 
die  —  so  that  he  is   in  an   almighty   fix.     In   this   dis- 
agreeable   dilemma,    he    contrives    to    amuse    himself 
with  politics— and,  rather  of  a  Jacobinical  cast:   like 
the  Vir^ilian   jEneas,  Gebir  is  introduced  not  to  the 
shades  of  the  past  only,    but  of  the  future.     He  sees 
the  preexisting   ghosts    of   gentlemen    who   are   yet  to 
come,  silent  as  ghosts  ought  to  be,  but  destined  at  some 
far  distant  time  to  make   a  considerable  noise   m   our 
upper  world.     Amongst  these  is  our  worthy  old  George 
III.,  who  (strange  to  say  !)  is  not  foreseen  as  galloping 
from  Windsor   to  Kew,    surrounded    by    an    escort   of 
dragoons,  nor  in  a  scarlet  coat  riding  after  a  fox,  nor 
taking  his  morning  rounds  amongst  his  sheep  and  his 
turnips  ;  but  in  the  likeness  of  some   savage   creature, 
whom  really,   were   it   not  for   his    eyebrows   and   his 
'^slanting''   forehead,   the  reader   would   never   recog- 


nize 


416  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOK. 

•*  Aroar  !  what  wretch  that  nearest  us  ?  what  wretch 
Is  that,  with  eyebrows  white  and  slanting  brow  ' 

0  king  I 

Iberia  bore  him  ;  but  the  breed  acciirst 
Inclement  winds  blew  blighting  from  north-east." 

Iberia  is  spiritual  England ;  and  north-east  is  mystical 
Hanover.  But  what,  then,  were  the  "wretch's"  crimes? 
The  white  eyebrows  I  confess  to ;  those  were  certainly 
crimes  of  considerable  magnitude :  but  what  else  ? 
Gebir  has  the  same  curiosity  as  myself,  and  propounds 
something  like  the  same  fishing  question  : 

"  He  was  a  warrior  then,  nor  feared  the  gods  ?  " 

To  which  Aroar  answers  — 

•'  Gebir  !  he  feared  the  demons,  not  the  gods  ; 
Though  them,  indeed,  his  daily  face  adored, 
And  was  no  warrior  ;  yet  the  thousand  lives 
Squandered  as  if  to  exercise  a  sling,  &c.  &c." 

Keally  Aroar  is  too  Tom-Painish,  and  seems  up  to  a 
little  treason.  He  makes  the  poor  king  answerable 
for  more  than  his  own  share  of  national  offences,  if 
such  they  were.  (All  of  us  in  the  last  generation  were 
rather  fond  of  fighting  and  assisting  at  fights  in  the 
character  of  mere  spectators.  I  am  sure  I  was.  But 
if  that  is  any  fault,  so  was  Plato,  who  (though  probably 
inferior  as  a  philosopher  to  you  and  me,  reader)  was 
much  superior  to  either  of  us  as  a  cock-fighter.  So 
was  Socrates  in  the  preceding  age  ;  for,  as  he  notori- 
ously haunted  the  company  of  Alcibiades  at  all  hours, 
tie  must  often  have  found  his  pupil  diverting  himself 
with  these  fighting  quails  which  he  kept  in  such 
numbers.     Be  assured   that    the   oracle's   "  wisest   ot 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  417 

men ''  lent  a  hand  very  cheerfully  to  putting  on  the 
spurs  when  a  main  was  to  be  fought;  and;  as  to  bet- 
ting, probably  that  was  the  reason  that  Xantippe  was 
so  often  down  upon  him  when  he  went  home  at  night. 
To  come  home  reeling  from  a  fight,  without  a  drachma 
left  in  his  pocket,  would  naturally  provoke  any  woman. 
Posterity  has  been  very  much  misinformed  about  these 
things ;  and,  no  doubt,  about  Xantippe,  poor  woman, 
in  particular.  If  she  had  had  a  disciple  to  write  books, 
as  her  cock-fighting  husband  had,  perhaps  we  should 
have  read  a  very  different  story,  f  By  the  way,  the 
propensity  to  scandaliim  magnatum  in  Aroar  was  one 
of  the  things  that  fixed  my  youthful  attention,  and 
perhaps  my  admiration,  upon  Gebir.  For  myself,  as 
perhaps  the  reader  may  have  heard,  1  was  and  am  a 
Tory ;  and  in  some  remote  geological  era,  my  bones 
may  be  dug  up  by  some  future  Buckland  as  a  specimen 
of  the  fossil  Tory.  Yet,  for  all  that,  I  loved  audacity ; 
and  I  gazed  with  some  indefinite  shade  of  approbation 
upon  a  poet  whom  the  attorney-general  might  have 
occasion  to  speak  with. 

This,  however,  was  a  mere  condiment  to  the  mam 
attraction  of  the  poem.  That  lay  in  the  picturesque- 
ness  of  the  images,  attitudes,  groups,  dispersed  every- 
where. The  eye  seemed  to  rest  everywhere  upon 
festal  processions,  upon  the  panels  of  Theban  gates, 
or  upon  sculptured  vases.  The  very  first  lines  that  by 
accident  met  my  eye  were  thore  which  follow.  I  cite 
them  in  mere  obedience  to  the  fact  as  it  really  was ; 
else  there  are  more  striking  illustrations  of  this  sculp- 
turesque faculty  in  Mr,  Landor ;  and  for  this  faculty 
•t  was  that  both  Southey  and  myself  separately  and 
27 


418  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

independently  had   named   him  the    English   Valerius 
Flaccus. 

GEBIR    ON    REPAIRING    TO    HIS    FIRST   INTERVIEW   WITH 
CHAROBA. 

••  But  Gebir,  when  he  heard  of  her  approach. 
Laid  by  his  orbed  shield  :  his  vizor  helm. 
His  buckler  and  his  corslet  he  laid  by, 
And  bade  that  none  attend  him :  at  his  side 
Two  faithful  dogs  that  urge  the  silent  course, 
Shaggy,  deep-chested,  croucht  ;  the  crocodile. 
Crying,  oft  made  them  raise  their  flaccid  ears. 
And  push  their  heads  within  their  master's  hand. 
There  was  a  lightning  paleness  in  his  face. 
Such  as  Diana  rising  over  the  rocks 
Showered  on  the  lonely  Latmian  ;  on  his  brow 
Sorrow  there  was,  but  there  was  naught  severe." 

"  And  the  long  moonbeam  on  the  hard  wet  sand 
Lay  like  a  jasper  column  half  up-reared." 

"  The  king,  who  sate  before  his  tent,  descried 
The  dust  rise  reddened  from  the  setting  sun." 

Now  let  us  pass  to  the  imaginarj''  dialogues :  — 
Marshal  Bugeaud  and  Arab  Chieftain. —  This  dia- 
'ogue,  which  is  amongst  the  shortest,  would  not  chal- 
lenge a  separate  notice,  were  it  not  for  the  freshness 
m  the  public  mind/"  and  the  yet  uncicatrized  raw- 
ness of  that  atrocity  which  it  commemorates.  Here 
is  an  official  account  from  the  commander-in-chief:  — 
"  Of  seven  hundred  refractory  and  rebellious,  who 
took  refuge  in  the  caverns,  thirty"  [says  the 
glory-hunting  Marshal],  "and  thirty  only,  are  alive; 
and  of  these  thirty  there  are  four  only  who  are 
capable  of  labor,  or  indeed  of  motion."  How  precious 
K)  the  Marshal's  heart  must  be  that  harvest  of  misery 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       419 

from  which  he  so  reluctantly  allows  the  discount  of 
about  one-half  per  cent !  Four  only  out  of  seven  hun- 
dred, he  is  happy  to  assure  Christendom,  remain  capa- 
ble of  hopping  about ;  as  to  working,  or  getting  honest 
bread,  or  doing  any  service  in  this  world  to  themselves 
or  others,  it  is  truly  delightful  to  announce,  for  public 
information,  that  all  such  practices  are  put  a  stop  to  for- 
ever. 

Amongst  the  fortunate  four,  who  retain  the  power 
of  hopping,  we  must  reckon  the  Arab  Chieftain,  who 
is  introduced  into  the  colloquy  in  the  character  of 
respondent.  He  can  hop,  of  course,  ex  hypothesi, 
being  one  of  the  ever-lucky  quaternion  ;  he  can  hop  a 
little  also  as  a  rhetorician ;  indeed,  as  to  that,  he  is  too 
much  for  the  Marshal ;  but  on  the  other  hand  he  can- 
not see ;  the  cave  has  cured  him  of  any  such  imperti- 
nence as  staring  into  other  people's  faces ;  he  is  also 
lame,  the  cave  has  shown  him  the  absurdity  of  ram- 
bling about ;  —  and,  finally,  he  is  a  beggar ;  or,  if  he 
will  not  allow  himself  to  be  called  by  that  name,  upon 
the  argument  [which  seems  plausible]  that  he  cannot 
be  a  beggar  if  he  never  begs,  it  is  not  the  less  certain 
ihat,  in  case  of  betting  a  sixpence,  the  chieftain  would 
find  it  inconvenient  to  stake  the  cash. 

The  Marshal,  who  apparently  does  not  pique  him- 
self upon  politeness,  adresses  the  Arab  by  the  follow- 
ing assortment  of  names  —  "  Thief,  assassm,  traitor  ; 
blind  graybeard !  lame  beggar ! "  The  three  first 
titles  being  probably  mistaken  for  compliments,  the 
Arab  pockets  in  silence  ;  bat  to  the  double-barrelled 
discharges  of  the  two  last  he  replies  thus  :  —  "  Cease 
here.     Thou  canst  never  make  me  beg  for  bread,  for 


420  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

water,  or  for  life ;  my  gray  beard  is  frora  God  ;  my 
blindness  and  lameness  are  from  thee."  This  is  a 
pleasant  way  of  doing  business  ;  rarely  does  one  find 
little  accounts  so  expeditiously  settled  and  receipted. 
Beggar  ?  But  how  if  I  do  not  beg  ?  Graybeard  ? 
Put  that  down  to  the  account  of  God.  Cripple  ?  Put 
that  down  to  your  own.  Getting  sulky  under  this 
mode  of  fencing  from  the  desert-born,  the  Marshal 
invites  him  to  enter  one  of  his  new-made  law  courts, 
where  he  will  hear  of  something  probably  not  to  his 
advantage.  Our  Arab  friend,  however,  is  no  con- 
noisseur m  courts  of  law:  small  wale'^  of  courts  in 
the  desert ;  he  does  not  so  much  "  do  himself  the  honor 
to  decline"  as  he  turns  a  deaf  ear  to  this  proposal,  and 
on  his  part  presents  a  little  counter  invitation  to  the 
Marshal  for  a  pic-nic  party  to  the  caves  of  Dahra. 
"  Enter  "  (says  the  unsparing  Sheik),  "  and  sing  and 
whistle  in  the  cavern  where  the  bones  of  brave  men 
are  never  to  bleach,  are  never  to  decay.  Go,  where 
the  mother  and  infant  are  inseparable  forever — one 
mass  of  charcoal;  the  breasts  that  gave  life,  the  lips 
that  received  it  —  all,  all,  save  only  where  two  arms 
in  color  and  hardness  like  corroded  iron,  cling  round 
a  brittle  stem,  shrunken,  warped,  and  where  two  heads 
are  calcined.  Even  this  massacre,  no  doubt,  will  find 
defenders  in  ymir  country,  for  it  is  the  custom  of  ycnir 
country  to  cover  blood  with  lies,  and  lies  with  blood." 
"  And  (says  the  facetious  French  Marshal)  here  and 
there  a  sprinkling  of  ashes  over  both."  A^ab.  "  End- 
ing in  merriment,  as  befits  ye.  But  is  it  ended  ?  "  But 
is  it  ended?  Ay;  the  wilderness  beyond  Algiers 
returns  an  echo  to  those  ominous  words  of  the  blintf 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       421 

and  mutilated  chieftain.  No,  brave  Arab,  although 
the  Marshal  scoffingly  rejoins  that  at  least  it  is  ended 
for  you,  ended  it  is  not ;  for  the  great  quarrel  by  which 
human  nature  pleads  with  such  a  fiendish  spirit  of 
warfare,  carried  on  under  the  countenance  of  him  who 
stands  first  in  authority  under  the  nation  that  stands 
second  in  authority  amongst  the  leaders  of  civiliza- 
tion;—  quarrel  of  that  sort,  once  arising,  does  not 
go  to  sleep  again  until  it  is  righted  forever.  As  the 
English  martyr  at  Oxford  said  to  his  fellow-martyr  — 
"  Brother,  be  of  good  cheer,  for  we  shall  this  day  light 
up  a  fire  in  England  that,  by  the  blessing  of  God,  can- 
not be  extinguished  forever,"  —  even  so  the  atrocities 
of  these  hybrid  campaigns  between  baffled  civiliza- 
tion and  barbarism,  provoked  into  frenzy,  will,  like 
the  horrors  of  the  middle  passage  rising  up  from  the 
Atlantic  deep,  suddenly,  at  the  bar  of  the  British 
senate,  sooner  or  later  reproduce  themselves,  in  strong 
reactions  of  the  social  mind  throughout  Christendom, 
upon  all  the  horrors  of  war  that  are  wilful  and  super- 
fluous. In  that  case  there  will  be  a  consolation  m 
reserve  for  the  compatriots  of  those,  the  bra\e  men, 
the  women,  and  the  innocent  children,  who  died  in  that 
fiery  furnace  at  Dahra. 

"  Their  moans 
The  vales  redoubled  to  the  hills,  and  the^ 
To  heaven.  "''2 

The  caves  of  Dahra  repeated  the  woe  to  the  hills, 
and  the  hills  to  God.  But  such  a  furnace,  though 
fierce,  may  be  viewed  as  brief  indeed  if  it  shall  ter- 
Miinate   in  permanently  pointing  the  wrath  of  nation.', 


422  NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

(as  in  this  dialog^ue  it  has  pointed  the  wrath  of  genius) 
to  the  particular  outrage  and  class  of  outrages  which 
it  concerns.  The  wrath  of  nations  is  a  consuming 
wrath,  and  the  scorn  of  intellect  is  a  withering  scorn, 
for  all  abuses  upon  which  either  one  or  the  other  is 
led,  by  strength  of  circumstances,  to  settle  itself  syS' 
tematically.  The  danger  is  for  the  most  part  that  the 
very  violence  of  public  feeling  should  rock  it  asleep 
—  the  tempest  exhausts  itself  by  its  own  excesses  — 
and  the  thunder  of  one  or  two  immediate  explosions, 
by  satisfying  the  first  clamors  of  human  justice  and 
indignation,  is  too  apt  to  intercept  that  sustained  roll  of 
artillery  which  is  requisite  for  the  effectual  assault  of 
long-established  abuses.  Luckily  in  the  present  case 
of  the  Dahra  massacre  there  is  the  less  danger  of  such 
a  result,  as  the  bloody  scene  has  happened  to  fall 
in  with  a  very  awakened  state  of  the  public  sensibility 
as  to  the  evils  of  war  generally,  and  with  a  state  of 
expectation  almost  romantically  excited  as  to  the  possi- 
bility of  readily  or  soon  exterminating  these  evils, 

Hope,  meantime,  even  if  unreasonable,  becomes  wise 
and  holy  when  it  points  along  a  path  of  purposes 
that  are  more  than  usually  beneficent.  According  to 
a  fine  illustration  of  Sir  Phillip  Sidney's,  drawn  from 
the  practice  of  archery,  by  attempting  more  than  we 
can  possibly  accomplish,  we  shall  yet  reach  further 
than  ever  we  should  have  reached  with  a  less  ambitious 
aim;  we  shall -do  much  for  the  purification  of  war,  if 
nothing  at  all  for  its  abolition ;  and  atrocities  of  this 
4Jgerino  order  are  amongst  the  earliest  that  will  give 
way.  They  will  sink  before  the  growing  illumination 
and  (what  is   equally   important)   before   the   growing 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    UlNDOK.  423 

combination  of  minds  acting  simultaneously  from  vari- 
ous centres,  in  nations  otherwise  the  most  at  variance. 
By  a  rate  of  motion  continually  accelerated,  the  gath- 
ering power  of  the  press,  falling  in  with  the  growing 
facilities  of  personal  intercourse,  is,  day  by  day,  bring- 
ing Europe  more  and  more  into  a  state  of  fusion,  in 
which  the  sublime  name  of  Christendom  will  contin- 
ually become  more  and  more  significant,  and  will 
express  a  unity  of  the  most  awful  order,  namely,  in 
the  midst  of  strife,  long  surviving  as  to  inferior  interests 
and  subordinate  opinions,  will  express  an  agreement 
continually  more  close,  and  an  agreement  continually 
more  operative,  upon  all  capital  questions  affecting 
human  rights,  duties,  and  the  interests  of  human /tto- 
gress.  Before  that  tribunal,  which  every  throb  of 
every  steam-engine,  in  printing  houses  and  on  railroads, 
is  hurrying  to  establish,  all  flagrant  abuses  of  bellige- 
rent powers  will  fall  prostrate  ;  and,  in  particular,  no 
form  of  pure  undisguised  murder  will  be  any  longer 
allowed  to  confound  itself  with  the  necessities  of  honor- 
able warfare. 

Much  already  has  been  accomplished  on  this  path ; 
more  than  people  are  aware  of;  so  gradual  and  silent 
has  been  the  advance.  How  noiseless  is  the  growth 
of  corn  !  Watch  it  night  and  day  for  a  week,  and  you 
will  never  see  it  growing ;  but  return  after  two  months, 
and  you  will  find  it  all  whitening  for  the  harvest,  Such, 
and  so  imperceptible,  in  the  stages  of  their  motion,  are 
the  victories  of  the  press.  Here  is  one  instance.  Just 
forty-seven  years  ago,  on  the  shores  of  Syria,  was 
selebrated,  by  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  the  most  damnable 
sarnival   of  murder  that   romance  has  fabled,  or  that 


424  NOTES    ON    WALTER   SAVAGE    LANDOK. 

history  has  recorded.  Rather  more  than  four  thousand 
men  —  not  (like  Tyrolese  or  Spanish  guerillas),  even 
m  pretence,  "  insurgent  rustics,"  but  regular  troops, 
serving  the  Pacha  and  the  Ottoman  Sultan,  not  old  men 
that  might  by  odd  fractions  have  been  thankful  for 
dismissal  from  a  life  of  care  or  sorrow,  but  all  young 
Albanians,  in  the  early  morning  of  manhood,  the  oldest 
not  twenty-four  —  were  exterminated  by  successive 
rolls  of  musketry,  when  helpless  as  infants,  having 
their  arms  pinioned  behind  their  backs  like  felons  or. 
the  scaffold,  and  having  surrendered  their  muskets 
(which  else  would  have  made  so  desperate  a.  resist- 
ance), on  the  faith  that  they  were  dealing  with  soldiers 
and  men  of  honor.  I  have  elsewhere  examined,  as  a 
question  in  casuistry,  the  frivolous  pretences  for  this 
infamous  carnage,  but  that  examination  I  have  here  no 
wish  to  repeat ;  for  it  would  draw  off  the  attention 
from  one  feature  of  the  case,  which  I  desire  to  bring 
before  the  reader,  as  giving  to  this  Jaffa  tragedy  a 
depth  of  atrocity  wanting  in  that  of  Dahra.  The  four 
thousand  and  odd  young  Albanians  had  been  seduced, 
trepanned,  fraudulently  decoyed,  from  a  post  of  con- 
siderable strength,  in  which  they  could  and  would  have 
so  d  their  lives  at  a  bloody  rate,  by  a  solemn  promise 
of  safety  from  authorized  French  officers.  "  But," 
said  Napoleon,  in  part  of  excuse,  "  these  men,  my 
aides-de-camp,  were  poltroons  ;  to  save  their  own  lives, 
they  made  promises  which  they  ought  not  to  have 
made."  Suppose  it  so  ;  and  suppose  the  case  one  in 
whi-ih  the  supreme  authority  has  a  right  to  disavow 
his  agents  ;  what  then  ?  This  entitles  that  authority  tc 
-efuse  his  ratification  to  the  terms  agreed  on ;  but  this 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  4'i<3 

at  the  same  time,  obliges  him  to  replace  the  hostile 
parties  in  the  advantages  from  which  his  agents  had 
wiled  them  by  these  terms.  A  robber,  who  even  owns 
himself  such,  will  not  pretend  that  he  may  refuse  the 
price  of  the  jewel  as  exorbitant,  and  yet  keep  pos- 
session of  the  jewel.  And  next  comes  a  fraudulent 
advantage,  not  obtained  by  a  knavery  in  the  aid-de- 
camp, but  in  the  leader  himself  The  surrender  of  the 
weapons,  and  the  submission  to  the  fettering  of  the 
arms,  were  not  concessions  from  the  Albanians,  filched 
by  the  representatives  of  Napoleon,  acting  (as  he 
says)  without  orders,  but  by  express  falsehoods,  ema- 
nating from  himself.  The  offiaer  commanding  at 
Dahra  could  not  have  reached  his  enemy  without  the 
shocking  resource  which  he  employed ;  Napoleon 
could.  The  officer  at  Dahra  violated  no  covenant ; 
Napoleon  did.  The  officer  at  Dahra  had  not  by  lies 
seduced  his  victims  from  their  natural  advantages ; 
Napoleon  had.  Such  was  the  atrocity  of  Jaffa  in  the 
year  1799.  Now,  the  relation  of  that  great  carnage 
to  the  press,  the  secret  argument  through  which  that 
vast  massacre  connects  itself  with  the  progress  of  the 
press,  is  this  —  that  in  1799,  and  the  two  following 
years,  when  most  it  had  become  important  to  search 
the  character  and  acts  of  Napoleon,  excepting  Sir 
Robert  Wilson,  no  writer  in  Europe,  no  section  of  the 
press,  cared  much  to  insist  upon  this,  by  so  many 
degrees,  the  worst  deed  of  modern''''  military  life. 
From  that  deed  all  the  waters  of  the  Atlantic  would 
not  have  cleansed  him  ;  and  yet,  since  1804,  we  have 
heard  much  oftener  of  the  sick  men  whom  he  poisoned 
m   his  Syrian   hospital    (an   act   of   merely   erroneous 


426  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

aumanity),  and  more  of  the  Due  d'Enghien's  execu- 
tion, than  of  either ;  though  this,  savage  as  it  was. 
admits  of  such  palliations  as  belong  to  doubtful  prov- 
ocations in  the  sufferer,  and  to  extreme  personal  terror 
in  the  inflicter.  Here,  then,  we  have  a  case  of  whole- 
sale military  murder,  emanating  from  Christendom, 
and  not  less  treacherous  than  the  worst  which  have 
been  ascribed  to  the  Mahometan  Timur,  or  even  to  any 
Hindoo  Rajah,  which  hardly  moved  a  vibration  of 
anger,  or  a  solitary  outcry  of  protestation  from  the 
European  press  (then,  perhaps,  having  the  excuse  of 
deadly  fear  for  herself),  or  even  from  the  press  of 
moral  England,  having  no  such  excuse.  Fifty  years 
have  passed  ;  a  less  enormity  is  perpetrated,  but  again 
by  a  French  leader ;  and,  behold,  Europe  is  nofw  con- 
vulsed from  side  to  side  by  unaffected  indignation  !  So 
travels  the  press  to  victory ;  such  is  the  light,  and  so 
broad,  which  it  diffuses  ;  such  is  the  strength  for  action 
by  which  it  combines  the  hearts  of  nations. 

MELANCTHON    AND    CALVIN. 

Of  Mr.  Landor's  notions  in  religion  it  would  be  use- 
ess,  and  without  polemic  arguments  it  would  be  arro- 
gant, to  say  that  they  are  false.  It  is  sufficient  to  say 
that  they  are  degrading.  In  the  dialogue  between 
Melancthon  and  Calvin,  it  is  clear  that  the  former  rep- 
resents Mr.  L.  himself,  and  is  not  at  all  the  Melancthon 
whom  we  may  gather  from  his  writings.  Mr.  Landor 
has  heard  that  he  was  gentle  and  timid  in  action ;  and 
ne  exhibits  him  as  a  mere  development  of  that  key 
note ;  as  a  compromiser  of  all  that  is  severe  in  doc 
trine ;    and   as    on    effeminate   picker  and    chooser   in 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANUOR.  427 

morals.  God,  in  his  conception  of  him,  is  not  a  iather 
so  much  as  a  benign,  but  somewhat  weak,  old  grand- 
father; and  we,  his  grandchildren,  being  now  and  then 
rather  naughty,  are  to  be  ticlded  with  a  rod  made  of 
feathers,  but,  upon  the  whole,  may  rely  upon  an  eter- 
nity of  sugar-plums.  For  instance,  take  the  puny  idea 
ascribed  to  Melancthon  upon  Idolatry;  and  consider, 
for  one  moment,  how  little  it  corresponds  to  the  vast 
machinery  reared  up  by  God  himself  against  this 
secret  poison  and  dreadful  temptation  of  human  na- 
ture. Melancthon  cannot  mean  to  question  the  truth 
or  the  importance  of  the  Old  Testament ;  and  yet,  if 
his  view  of  idolatry  (as  reported  by  L.)  be  sound,  the 
Bible  must  have  been  at  the  root  of  the  worst  mischief 
ever  yet  produced  by  idolatry.  He  begins  by  de- 
scribing idolatry  as  "  Jennsh  ;  "  insinuating  that  it  was 
an  irregularity  -chiefly  besetting  the  Jews.  But  how 
perverse  a  fancy !  In  the  Jews,  idolatry  was  a  dis- 
ease ;  in  Pagan  nations,  it  was  the  normal  state.  In  a 
nation  (if  any  such  nation  could  exist)  of  cretins  or  of 
lepers,  nobody  would  talk  of  cretinism  or  leprosy  as 
of  any  morbid  affection  ;  that  would  be  the  regular 
and  natural  condition  of  man.  But  where  either  was 
spoken  of  with  horror  as  a  ruinous  taint  in  human  flesh, 
it  would  argue  that  naturally  (and,  perhaps,  by  a  large 
majority)  the  people  were  uninfected.  Amongst  Pa- 
gans, nobody  talked  of  idolatry  —  no  such  idea  existed 
—  because  that  was  the  regular  form  of  religious  wor- 
ship. To  be  named  at  all,  idolatry  must  be  viewed  as 
standmg  in  opposition  to  some  higher  worship  that  is 
not  idolatry.  But,  next,  as  we  are  all  agreed  that  in 
idolatry  there  is  something  evil,  and  differ  only  as   to 


i28  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LA>DOR. 

ihe  propriety  of  considering  it  a  Jewish  evil,  m  what 
does  this  evil  lie  ?  It  lies,  according  to  the  profound 
Landorian  Melancthon,  in  this,  that  different  idolaters 
figure  the  Deity  under  different  forms ;  if  they  could 
all  agree  upon  one  and  the  same  mode  of  figuring  the 
invisible  Being,  there  need  be  no  quarrelling;  and  in 
this  case,  consequently,  there  would  be  no  harm  in 
iJolatry,  none  whatever.  But,  unhappily,  it  seems 
each  nation,  or  sometimes  section  of  a  nation,  has  a 
different  fancy ;  they  get  to  disputing ;  and  from  that 
they  get  to  boxing,  in  which,  it  is  argued,  lies  the  true 
evil  of  idolatry.  It  is  an  extra  cause  of  broken  heads. 
One  tribe  of  men  represent  the  Deity  as  a  beautiful 
young  man,  with  a  lyre  and  a  golden  bow ;  another  as 
a  snake  ;  and  a  third  —  Egyptians,  for  instance,  of 
old — as  a  beetle  or  an  onion;  these  last,  according  to 
Juvenal's  remark,  having  the  happy  privilege  of  grow- 
ing their  own  gods  in  their  own  kitchen-gardens.  In 
all  this  there  would  be  no  harm,  were  it  not  for  subse- 
quent polemics  and  polemical  assaults.  Such,  if  we 
listen  to  Mr.  L.,  is  Melancthon's  profound  theory''*  of 
a  talse  idolatrous  religion.  Were  the  police  every- 
where on  an  English  footing,  and  the  magistrates  as 
unlike  as  possible  to  Turkish  Cadis,  nothing  could  be 
less  objectionable ;  but,  as  things  are,  the  beetle- 
worshipper  despises  the  onion-worshipper ;  which 
breeds  ill  blood  ;  whence  grows  a  cudgel ;  and  from 
(he  cudgel  a  constable ;  and  from  the  constable  an 
unjust  magistrate.  Not  so,  Mr.  Landor ;  thus  did  not 
Melancthon  speak ;  and  if  he  did,  and  would  defend 
It  for  a  thousand  times,  then  for  a  thousand  times  he 
would   deserve  to  be  trampled    by  posterity  into  tha 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       429 

Grerman  mire  which  he  sought  to  evade  by  his  Grecian 
disguise.''^  The  true  evil  of  idolatry  is  this  :  There  is 
one  sole  idea  of  God,  which  corresponds  adequately 
to  his  total  nature.  Of  this  idea,  two  things  may  be 
affirmed  :  the  first  being,  that  it  is  at  the  root  of  all 
absolute  grandeur,  of  all  truth,  and  of  all  moral  per- 
fection ;  the  second  being,  that,  natural  and  easy  as 
it  seems  when  once  unfolded,  it  could  only  have  been 
unfolded  by  revelation;  and,  to  all  eternity,  he  that 
started  with  a  false  conception  of  God,  could  not, 
through  any  effort  of  his  own,  have  exchanged  it  for  a 
true  one.  All  idolaters  alike,  though  not  all  in  equal 
degrees,  by  intercepting  the  idea  of  God  through  the 
prism  of  some  representative  creature  that  partially 
resembles  God,  refract,  splinter,  and  distort  that  idea. 
Even  the  idea  of  light,  of  the  pure,  solar  light  —  the  old 
Persian  symbol  of  God  —  has  that  depraving  neces- 
sity. Light  itself,  besides  being  an  imperfect  symbol, 
is  an  incarnation  for  us.  However  pure  itsejf,  or  in 
its  original  divine  manifestation,  for  us  it  is  incarnated 
in  forms  and  in  matter  that  are  not  pure  :  it  gravitates 
towards  physical  alliances,  and  therefore  towards  un- 
spiritual  pollutions.  And  all  experience  shows  that 
the  tendency  for  man,  left  to  his  own  imagination,  is 
downwards.  The  purest  symbol,  derived  from  created 
things,  can  and  will  condescend  to  the  grossness  of 
inferior  human  natures,  by  submitting  to  mirror  itself 
m  more  and  more  carnal  representative  symbols,  until 
finally  the  mixed  element  of  resemblance  to  God  la 
altogether  buried  and  lost.  God,  by  this  succession  of 
imperfect  interceptions,  falls  more  and  more  under  the 
taint  and    limitation    of  the  alien  elements    associated 


i30  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

vvith  all  created  things ;  and,  for  the  ruin  of  ill  mora, 
grandeur  in  man,  every  idolatrous  nation  left  to  itself 
will  gradually  bring'  round  the  idea  of  God  into  the 
idea  of  a  powerful  demon.  Many  things  check  and 
disturb  this  tendency  for  a  time  ;  but  finally,  and  under 
that  intense  civilization  to  which-  man  intellectually  is 
always  hurrying  under  the  eternal  evolution  of  physi- 
cal knowledge,  such  a  degradation  of  God's  idea, 
ruinous  to  the  moral  capacities  of  man,  would  un- 
doubtedly perfect  itself,  were  it  not  for  the  kindling  of 
a  purer  standard  by  revelation.  Idolatry,  therefore,  is 
not  merely  an  evil,  and  one  utterly  beyond  the  power 
of  social  institutions  to  redress,  but,  in  fact,  it  is  the 
fountain  of  all  other  evil  that  seriously  menaces  the 
destiny  of  the  human  race 

PORSON    AND    SOUTHEY. 

The  two  dialogues  between  Southey  and  Porson 
relate  to  Wordsworth ;  and  they  connect  Mr.  Landor 
with  a  body  of  groundless  criticism,  for  which  vainly 
he  will  seek  to  evade  his  responsibility  by  pleading  the 
caution  posted  up  at  the  head  of  his  Conversations, 
namely,  — "  Avoid  a  mistake  in  attributing  to  the  writer 
any  opinions  in  this  book  but  what  are  spoken  under 
his  own  name."  If  Porson,  therefore,  should  happen 
to  utter  villanies  that  are  indictable,  that  (you  are  to 
understand)  is  Person's  affair.  Render  unto  Landoi 
the  eloquence  of  the  dialogue,  but  render  unto  Porson 
any  kicks  which  Porson  may  have  merited  by  his 
atrocities  against  a  man  whom  assuredly  he  never 
heard  of,  and  probably  never  saw.  Now,  unless 
Wordsworth   ran    into  Porson  in   the   streets   of  Cam- 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    L.LNDOR.  431 

bridge  on  some  dark  night  about  the  era  of  the  French 
Revolution,  and  capsized  him  into  the  kennel  —  a 
thing  which  is  exceedingly  improbable,  considering 
that  Wordsworth  was  never  tipsy  except  once  in  his 
life,  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  is  exceeding  probable, 
considering  that  Porson  was  very  seldom  otherwise  — 
barring  this  one  opening  for  a  collision,  there  is  no 
human  possibility  or  contingency  known  to  insurance 
offices,  through  which  Porson  ever  could  have  been 
brought  to  trouble  his  head  about  Wordsworth.  It 
would  have  taken  three  witches,  and  three  broom- 
sticks, clattering  about  his  head,  to  have  extorted  from 
Porson  any  attention  to  a  contemporary  poet  that  did 
not  give  first-rate  feeds.  And  a  man  that,  besides  his 
criminal  conduct  in  respect  of  dinners,  actually  made 
it  a  principle  to  drink  nothing  but  water,  would  have 
seemed  so  depraved  a  character  in  Person's  eyes  that, 
out  of  regard  to  public  decency,  he  would  never  have 
mentioned  his  name,  had  he  even  happened  to  know 
it.  "  O  no  !  he  never  mentioned  him."  Be  assured 
of  that.  As  to  Poetry,  be  it  known  that  Porson  read 
none  whatever,  unless  it  were  either  political  or  ob- 
scene. With  no  seasoning  of  either  sort,  "  wherefore," 
he  would  ask  indignantly,  "  should  I  waste  iny  time 
upon  a  poem  ?  "  Porson  had  read  the  Rolliad,  because 
*it  concerned  his  political  party ;  he  had  read  the  epistle 
of  Obereea,  Queen  of  Otaheite,  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks, 
because,  if  Joseph  was  rather  too  demure,  the  poem  was 
not.  Else,  and  with  such  exceptions,  he  condescended 
not  to  any  metrical  writer  subsequent  to  the  era  of  Pope, 
.vhose  Eloisa  to  Abelard  he  could  saj'-  by  heart,  and 
^.onld  even  sing  from  beginning  to  end  ;  which,  indeed. 


i32  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

he  wmdd  do,  whether  you  chose  it  or  not,  after  a  sufR 
cient  charge  of  brandy,  and  sometimes  even  though 
threatened  with  a  cudgel,  in  case  he  persisted  in  his 
molestations.  Waller  he  had  also  read  and  occasion- 
ally quoted  with  effect.  But  as  to  a  critique  on  Words- 
worth, whose  name  had  not  begun  to  mount  from  the 
ground  when  Porson  died,'^''  as  reasonably  and  charac- 
teristically might  it  have  been  put  into  the  mouth  of 
the  Hetman  Platoff.  Instead  of  Person's  criticisms  on 
writings  which  he  never  saw,  let  us  hear  Person's 
account  of  a  fashionable  rout  in  an  aristocratic  London 
mansion :  it  was  the  only  party  of  distinction  that  this 
hirsute  but  most  learned  Theban  ever  visited;  and  his 
history  of  what  passed  (comic  alike  and  tragic)  is 
better  worth  preserving  than  "  Brantome,"  or  even  than 
Swift's  "  Memoirs  of  a  Parish  Clerk."  It  was  by  the 
hoax  of  a  young  Cantab  that  the  professor  was  ever 
decoyed  into  such  a  party :  the  thing  was  a  swindle ; 
but  his  report  of  its  natural  philosophy  is  not  on  that 
account  the  less  picturesque  :  — 

SouTHET. —  Why  do  you  repeat  the  word  rout  so  often  .' 

PoBSON. —  I  was  once  at  one  by  mistake  ;  and  really  I  saw 
there  what  you  describe  ;  and  this  made  me  repeat  the  word  and 
smile.     You  seem  curious. 

SouTHEY. —  Rather,  indeed. 

PoRSON. —  I  had  been  dining  out ;  there  were  some  who 
smoked  after  dinner :  within  a  few  hours,  the  fumes  of  their 
pipes  produced  such  an  eifect  on  my  head  that  I  was  willing 
to  go  into  the  air  a  little.  Still  I  continued  hot  and  thirsty  • 
and  an  undergraduate,  whose  tutor  was  my  old  acquaintance 
proposed  tliat  we  should  turn  into  an  oyster-cellar,  and  refresh 
ourselves  with  oysters  and  porter.  The  rogue,  instead  of  this, 
»onducted  me  to  a  fashionable  house  in  the  neighborhood  of  St 


NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  433 

Tames'  ;  and,  although  I  expostulated  with  him,  and  insisted 
that  we  were  going  up  stairs  and  not  down,  he  appeared  to  me 
BO  ingenuous  in  his  protestations  to  the  contrary  that  I  could 
well  disbelieve  him  no  longer.  Nevertheless,  receiving  on  the 
stairs  many  shoves  and  elbowings,  I  could  not  help  telling  him 
plainly,  that,  if  indeed  it  was  the  oyster-cellar  in  Fleet  street, 
the  company  was  much  altered  for  the  worse  ;  and  that,  in 
future,  I  should  frequent  another.  When  the  fumes  of  the 
pipes  had  left  me,  I  discovered  the  deceit  by  the  brilliancy  and 
indecency  of  the  dresses  ;  and  was  resolved  not  to  fall  into 
temptation.  Although,  to  my  great  satisfaction,  no  immodest 
proposal  was  directly  made  to  me,  I  looked  about  anxious  that 
no  other  man  should  know  me  beside  him  whose  wantonness 
had  conducted  me  thither  ;  and  I  would  have  escaped,  if  I  could 
have  found  the  door,  from  which  every  effort  I  made  appeared 
to  remove  me  farther  and  farther.  *  *  *  A  pretty  woman 
said  loudly,  "  He  has  no  gloves  on  !  "  "  What  nails  the  crea- 
ture has  !  "  replied  an  older  one — "Piano-forte  keys  wanting 
the  white." 

I  pause  to  say  that  this,  by  all  accounts  which  have 
reached  posterity,  was  really  no  slander.  The  profes- 
sor's forks  had  become  rather  of  the  dingiest,  probably 
through  inveterate  habits  of  scratching  up  Greek  roots 
from  diluvian  mould,  some  of  it  older  than  Deucalion's 
flood,  and  very  good,  perhaps,  for  turnips,  but  less  so 
for  the  digits  which  turn  up  turnips.  What  followed, 
however,  if  it  were  of  a  nature  to  be  circumstantially 

epeated,  must  have  been  more  trying  to  the  sensibili 
lies  of  the  Greek  oracle,  and  to  the  blushes  of  the 
policemen  dispersed  throughout  the  rooms,  than  even 
the  harsh  critique  upon  his  nails  ;  which,  let  the  wits 
<iay  what  they  would  in  their  malice,  were  no  doubt 
washed    regularly    enough    once    every    three    years. 

A.nd,  even  if  they  were  7iot,  I  should  say  that  this  is  not 
28 


434  NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE   LANDOR. 

80  Strong  a  fact  as  some  that  are  reported  about  many 
a  continental  professor.  Mrs.  CI nt,  with  the  two- 
fold neatness  of  an  Englishwoman  and  a  Quaker,  told 
me  that,  on  visiting  Pestalozzi,  the  celebrated  education 
professor,  at  Yverdun,  about  1820,  her  first  impression, 
^rom  a  distant  view  of  his  dilapidated  premises,  was 
profound  horror  at  the  grimness  of  his  complexion, 
which  struck  her  as  no  complexion  formed  by  nature, 
but  as  a  deposition  from  half  a  century  of  atmospheric 
rust  —  a  most  ancient  (zrugo.  She  insisted  on  a  radical 
purification,  as  a  5Wie  qiui  non  towards  any  interview 
with  herself.  The  mock  professor  consented.  Mrs.  CI, 
hired  a  stout  Swiss  charwoman,  used  to  the  scouring  of 
staircases,  kitchen  floors,  &c. ;  the  professor,  whom,  on 
this  occasion,  one  may  call  "  the  prisoner,"  was  accom- 
modated with  a  seat  (as  prisoners  at  the  bar  sometimes 
are  with  us)  in  the  centre  of  a  mighty  washing-tub,  and 
then  scoured  through  a  long  summer  forenoon,  by  the 
strength  of  a  brawny  Helvetian  arm.  "  And  now,  my 
dear  friends,"  said  Mrs.  CI.  to  myself,  "  is  it  thy  opinion 
that  this  was  cruel  ?  Some  people  say  it  was ;  and  i 
wish  to  disguise  nothing ;  —  it  was  not  mere  soap 
that  I  had  him  scoured  with,  but  soap  and  sand  ;  so 
say  honestly,  dost  thee  call  that  cruel  ?  "  Laughing  no 
more  than  the  frailty  of  my  human  nature  compelled 
ne,  I  replied,  "Far  from  it;  on  the  contrary,  every- 
bod}''  must  be  charmed  with  her  consideration  for  the 
professor,  in  not  having  him  cleaned  on  the  same 
prmciple  as  her  carriage,  namely,  taken  to  the  stable- 
yard,  mopped  severely"  \^^  Mobbed,  dost  thee  say?"  she 
exclaimed.  "  No,  no,"  I  said,  "  not  mobbed,  but  mopped 
antil  the  gravel  should  be  all  gone  "],  "  then  pelted  with 


NOTES    ON    WALTEE    SAVAGE    LANDOU.  i35 

liuckets  of  water  by  firemen,  and,  finally,  currycombed 
and  rubbed  down  by  two  grooms,  keeping  a  sharp 
sitsurrus'^  between  them,  so  as  to  soothe  his  wounded 
feelings  ;  after  all  which,  a  feed  of  oats  might  not  have 
been  amiss."  The  result,  however,  of  this  scouring 
extraordinary  was  probably  as  fatal  as  to  Mambrino's 
helmet  in  Don  Quixote.  Pestalozzi  issued,  indeed, 
from  the  washing-tub  like  Aeson  from  Medea's  kettle ; 
he  took  his  station  amongst  a  younger  and  fairer  gen- 
eration ;  and  the  dispute  was  now  settled  whether  he 
belonged  to  the  Caucasian  or  Mongolian  race.  But 
his  intellect  was  thought  to  have  sufTered  seriously. 
The  tarnish  of  fifty  or  sixty  years  seemed  to  have 
acquired  powers  of  reacting  as  a  stimulant  upon  the 
professor's  fancy,  through  the  rete  mucosum,  or  through. 
—  Heaven  knows  what.  He  was  too  old  to  be  convert- 
ed to  cleanliness  ;  the  Paganism  of  a  neglected  person 
at  seventy  becomes  a  sort  of  religion  interwoven  with 
the  nervous  system  —  just  as  the  well-known  Plica  Po- 
lo?iica  from  which  the  French  armies  suffered  so  much 
in  Poland,  during  1807-8,  though  produced  by  neglect 
of  the  hair,  will  not  be  cured  by  extirpation  of  the  hair. 
The  hair  becomes  matted  into  Medusa  locks,  or  what 
look  like  snakes  ;  and  to  cut  these  off"  is  oftentimes  to 
;ause  nervous  frenzy,  or  other  great  constitutional 
iisturbance.  I  never  heard,  indeed,  that  Pestalozzi 
suffered  apoplexy  from  his  scouring ;  but  certainly  his 
iieas  on  education  grew  bewildered,  and  will  be  found 
essentially  damaged,  after  that  great  epoch  —  his  bap* 
tism  by  water  and  sand. 

Now,  in   comparison  of  an   Orson  like  this  man  of 
Vverdun  —  this  great  Swiss  reformer,  who  might,  per- 


436  NOTES    ON     .VALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

haps,  have  bred  a  pet  variety  of  typhus-fevei  for  hjs  own 
separate  use  —  what  signify  nails,  though  worse  than 
Caliban's  or  Nebuchadnezzar's  ? 

This  Greek  professor  Porson  —  whose  knowleage  of 
English  was  so  limited  that  his  total  cargo  might  have 
been  embarked  on  board  a  walnut-shell,  on  the  bosom 
of  a  slop-basin,  and  insured  for  three  halfpence  — 
astonishes  me,  that  have  been  studying  English  for 
thirty  years  and  upwards,  by  the  strange  discoveries 
that  he  announces  in  this  field.  One  and  all,  I  fear, 
are  mares'  nests.  He  discovered,  for  instance,  on  his 
first  and  last  reception  amongst  aristocratic  people,  that 
in  this  region  of  society  a  female  bosom  is  called  her 
neck.  But,  if  it  really  had  been  so  called,  I  see  no 
objection  to  the  principle  concerned  in  such  disguises  ; 
and  I  see  the  greatest  to  that  savage  frankness  which 
virtually  is  indicated  with  applause  in  the  Porsonian 
remark.  Let  us  consider.  It  is  not  that  we  cannot 
speak  freely  of  the  female  bosom,  and  we  do  so  daily 
In  discussing  a  statue,  we  do  so  without  reserve  ;  and 
In  the  act  of  suckling  an  infant,  the  bosom  of  every 
woman  is  an  idea  so  sheltered  by  the  tenderness  and 
sanctity  with  which  all  but  ruffians  invest  the  organ 
of  maternity,  that  no  man  scruples  to  name  it,  if  the 
occasion  warrants  it.  He  suppresses  it  only  as  he 
suppresses  the  name  of  God;  not  as  an  idea  that  can 
tself  contain  any  indecorum,  but,  on  the  contrary,  as 
making  other  and  more  trivial  ideas  to  become  inde- 
corous when  associated  with  a  conception  rising  so 
much  above  their  own  standard.  Equally,  the  words 
affliction,  guilt,  penitence,  remorse,  &c.,  are  proscribed 
from    the    ordinary   current  of   conversation    amongsf 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    I<ANDOR.  437 

mere  acquaintances;  and  for  the  same  reason,  namely, 
that  they  touch  chords  too  impassioned  and  profound 
for  harmonizing  with  the  key  in  which  the  mere  social 
civilities  of  life  are  exchanged.  Meantime,  it  is  not 
true  that  any  custom  ever  prevailed  in  any  class  of 
calling  a  woman's  bosom  her  neck.  Porson  goes  on 
to  say,  that,  for  his  part,  he  was  born  in  an  age  when 
people  had  thighs.  Well,  a  great  many  people  have 
thighs  still.  But  in  all  ages  there  must  have  been 
many  of  whom  it  is  lawful  to  suspect  such  a  fact  zo- 
ologically ;  and  yet,  as  men  honoring  our  own  race, 
and  all  its  veils  of  mystery,  not  too  openly  to  insist 
upon  it,  which,  luckily,  there  is  seldom  any  occasion 
to  do. 

Mr.  Landor  conceives  that  we  are  growing  worse  in 
the  pedantries  of  false  delicacy.  I  think  not.  His 
own  residence  in  Italy  has  injured  his  sense  of  discrim- 
mation.  It  is  not  his  countrymen  that  have  grown 
conspicuously  more  demure  and  prudish,  but  he  himself 
that  has  grown  in  Italy  more  tolerant  of  what  is  really 
a  blamable  coarseness.  Various  instances  occur  in 
these  volumes  of  that  faulty  compliance  with  Southern 
^rossness.  The  tendencies  of  the  age,  among  our- 
selves, lie  certainly  in  one  channel  towards  excessive 
refinement.  So  far,  however,  they  do  but  balance  the 
opposite  tendencies  in  some  other  channels.  The 
craving  for  instant  effect  in  style  —  as  it  brings  forward 
many  disgusting  Germanisms  and  other  barbarisms  — 
as  it  transplants  into  literature  much  slang  from  the 
street  —  as  it  reacts  painfully  upon  the  grandeurs  of  the 
antique  scriptural  diction,  by  recalling  into  colloquial 
use    many  consecrated    words    which    thus   lose   theii 


438  NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR 

Grothic  beauty  —  also  operates  daily  amongst  jcurna. 
ists,  by  the  temptations  of  apparent  strength  that  lurk 
in  plain  speaking  or  even  in  brutality.  What  other 
temptation,  for  instance,  can  be  supposed  to  govern 
those  who,  in  speaking  of  hunger  as  it  affects  our 
paupers,  so  needlessly  affect  us  by  the  very  coarsest 
English  word  for  the  Latin  word  venter  ?  Surely  the 
word  stomach  would  be  intelligible  to  everybody,  and 
yet  disgust  nobody.  It  would  do  for  him  that  affectc 
plain  speaking ;  it  would  do  for  you  and  me  that  revolt 
from  gross  speaking.  Signs  from  abroad  speak  the 
very  same  language,  as  to  the  liberal  tendencies  (in 
this  point)  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Formerly,  it 
was  treason  for  a  Spaniard,  even  in  a  laudatory  copy 
of  verses,  to  suppose  his  own  Queen  lowered  to  the 
level  of  other  females  by  the  possession  of  legs  !  Con- 
stitutionally, the  Queen  was  incapable  of  legs.  How 
else  her  Majesty  contrived  to  walk,  or  to  dance,  the 
Inquisition  soon  taught  the  poet  was  no  concern  of  his. 
Royal  legs  for  females  were  an  inconceivable  thing  — 
except  amongst  Protestant  nations  ;  some  of  whom  the 
Spanish  Church  affirmed  to  be  even  disfigured  by  tails  ' 
Having  tails,  of  course  they  might  have  legs.  But  not 
Catholic  Queens.  Now-a-days,  so  changed  is  all  this 
that  if  you  should  even  express  your  homage  to  her 
Most  Catholic  Majesty,  by  sending  her  a  pair  of  em 
broidered  garters  —  which  certainly  presuppose  legs 
—  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  Spanish  Minister  of 
Finance  would  gratefully  carry  them  to  account  —  or. 
the  principle  that  "  every  little  helps."  Mr.  Porson  is 
equally  wrong,  as  I  conceive,  in  another  illustratior 
of  this  matter,  drawn  from  the  human  toes,  and  spe- 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       439 

nfically  from  the  great  toe.  It  is  true,  that,  in  refined 
society,  upon  any  rare  necessity  arising  for  alluding  to 
so  inconsiderable  a  member  of  the  human  statue,  gen- 
erally this  is  done  at  present  by  the  French  term  doigt 
de-pied  —  though  noi  always  —  as  may  be  seen  in 
various  honorary  certificates  granted  to  chiropodists 
within  the  last  twenty  months.  And  whereas  Mr.  Per- 
son asks  pathetically  —  What  harm  has  the  great  toe 
done,  that  it  is  never  to  be  named?  I  answer — The 
greatest  harm ;  as  may  be  seen  in  the  first  act  of 
"  Coriolanus,"  where  Menenius  justly  complains  that 
this  arrogant  subaltern  of  the  crural  system, 

" Being  basest,  meanest,  vilest, 


Still  goeth  foremost." 

Even  in  the  villany  of  running  away  from  battle,  this 
unworthy  servant  still  asserts  precedency.  I  repeat, 
however,  that  the  general  tendencies  of  the  age,  as  to 
the  just  limits  of  parrhesia  (using  the  Greek  word  in  a 
sense  wider  than  of  old),  are  moving  at  present  upon 
two  opposite  tracks  ;  which  fact  it  is,  as  in  some  other 
lases,  that  makes  the  final  judgment  difficult. 

ROMAN    IMPERATOR. 

Mr.   Landor,  though   really  learned,  often   puts   his 
learning  into  his  pocket. 

Thus,  with  respect  to  the  German  Empire,  Mr.  L 
asserts  that  it  was  a  chimaera  ;  that  the  Imperium  Ger- 
nanicum  was  a  mere  usage  of  speech,  founded  (if  I 
understand  him)  not  even  in  a  legal  fiction,  but  in 
a  blunder ;  that  a  German  Imperator  never  had  a  true 
historical  existence  ;  and,  finally,  that  even  the  Roman 


440       NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

title  of  Iraperator  —  which,  unquestionably,  surmounted 
in  grandeur  all  titles  of  honor  that  ever  were  or  will  be 
—  ranged  in  dignity  below  the  title  of  Rex. 

I  believe  him  wrong  in  every  one  of  these  doctrines ; 
let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the  last.  The  title  of  Impe- 
rator  was  not  originally  either  above  or  below  the  title 
of  Rex,  or  even  upon  the  same  level ;  it  was  what 
logicians  call  disparate  —  it  radiated  from  a  different 
centre,  precisely  as  the  modern  title  of  Decanus,  or 
Dean,  which  is  originally  astrological  [see  the  elder 
Scaliger  on  Manilius],  has  no  relation,  whether  of 
superiority  or  equality  or  inferiority,  to  the  title  of 
Colonel,  nor  the  title  of  Cardinal  any  such  relation  to 
that  of  Field-Marshal;  and  quite  as  little  had  Rex  to 
Imperator.  Masters  of  Ceremonies,  or  Lord  Chamber- 
lains, may  certainly  create  a  precedency  in  favor  of 
any  title  whatever  in  regard  to  any  other  title ;  but 
such  a  precedency  for  any  of  the  cases  before  us  would 
oe  arbitrary,  and  not  growing  out  of  any  internal  prin- 
ciple, though  useful  for  purposes  of  convenience.  As 
regards  the  Roman  Imperator,  originally  like  the  Ro- 
man PrcBtor  —  this  title  and  the  official  rank  pointed 
exclusively  to  military  distinctions.  In  process  of  time, 
the  Praetor  came  to  be  a  legal  officer,  and  the  Impera- 
tor to  bt  the  supreme  political  officer.  But  the  motive 
for  assuming  the  title  of  Imperator,  as  the  badge  or 
cogrwzance  of  the  sovereign  authority,  when  the  great 
transfiguration  of  the  Republic  took  place,  seems  to 
have  been  this.  An  essentially  new  distribution  of 
political  powers  had  become  necessary,  and  this  change 
masked  itself  to  Romans,  published  itself  in  menaces 
ind   muttering  thunder  to  foreign  states,  through  the 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LAXDOR.  441 

martial  title  of  Imperator.  A  new  equilibrium  was 
demanded  by  the  changes  which  time  and  luxury  and 
pauperism  had  silently  worked  on  the  composition  of 
Roman  society.  If  Rome  was  to  be  saved  from  herself 
—  if  she  was  to  be  saved  from  the  eternal  flux  and 
reflux  —  action  and  reaction  —  amongst  her  oligarchy 
of  immense  estates  (which  condition  of  things  it  was 
that  forced  on  the  great  sine  qua  Tioii  reforms  of  Caesar, 
against  all  the  babble  of  the  selfish  Cicero,  of  the 
wicked  Cato,  and  of  the  debt-ridden  Senate)  —  then  it 
was  indispensable  that  a  new  order  of  powers  should 
be  combined  for  bridling  her  internal  convulsions.  To 
carry  her  off  from  her  own  self-generated  vortex, 
which  would,  in  a  very  few  years,  have  engulfed  her 
and  drawn  her  down  into  fragments,  some  machinery 
as  new  as  steam-power  was  required  ;  her  own  native 
sails  filled  in  the  wrong  direction.  There  were  already 
powers  in  the  constitution  equal  to  the  work,  but  dis- 
tracted and  falsely  lodged.  These  must  be  gathered 
into  one  hand.  And,  yet,  as  names  are  all-powerful 
upon  our  frail  race,  this  recast  must  be  verbally  dis- 
guised. The  title  must  be  such  as,  whilst  flattering 
the  Roman  pride,  might  yet  announce  to  Oriental 
powers  a  plenipotentiary  of  Rome  who  argued  all  dis- 
puted points,  not  so  much  strongly  as  (an  Irish  phrase) 
with  "  a  strong  back  "  —  not  so  much  piquing  himself 
on  Aristotelian  syllogisms  that  came  within  Barbary 
and  Celarent,  as  upon  thirty  legions  that  stood  within 
»all.  The  Consulship  was  good  for  little  ;  that,  with 
iome  reservations,  could  be  safely  resigned  into  subo- 
iinate  hands.  The  Consular  name,  and  the  name  of 
Senate,  which  was  siill  suflTered   to  retain    an  obscure 


442       NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

vitality  and  power  of  resurrection,  continued  to  throw 
a  popular  lustre  over  the  government.  Millions  were 
duped.  But  the  essential  offices,  the  offices  in  which 
settled  the  organs  of  all  the  life  in  the  administration 
were  these:  —  1,  of  Military  Commander-in-Chief  (in- 
cluding such  a  partition  of  the  provinces  as  might  seal 
the  authority  in  this  officer's  hands,  and  yet  flatter  the 
people  through  the  Senate) ;  2,  of  Censor,  so  as  to 
watch  tlie  action  of  morals  and  social  usages  upon 
politics ;  3,  of  Pontifex  Maximus ;  4,  and  finally, 
of  Tribune.  The  tribunitial  power,  next  after  the 
military  power,  occupied  the  earliest  anxieties  of  the 
Caesars.  All  these  powers,  and  some  others  belonging 
to  less  dignified  functions,  were  made  to  run  through 
the  same  central  rings  (or  what  in  mail-coach  harness 
is  called  the  turrets)  :  the  "  ribbons  "  were  tossed  up  to 
one  and  the  same  imperial  coachman,  looking  as  ami- 
able as  he  could,  but,  in  fact,  a  very  truculent  person- 
age, having  powers  more  unlimited  than  was  always 
safe  for  himself.  And  now,  after  all  this  change  of 
things,  what  was  to  be  the  name  ?  By  what  title  should 
men  know  him  ?  Much  depended  upon  that.  The 
tremendous  symbols  of  S.  P.  Q.  R.  still  remained ;  nor 
had  they  lost  their  power.  On  the  contrary,  the  great 
idea  of  the  Roman  destiny,  as  of  some  vast  phantom 
moving  under  God  to  some  unknown  end,  was  greater 
han  ever ;  the  idea  was  now  so  great,  that  it  had 
outgrown  all  its  representative  realities.  Consul  and 
Proco7isul  would  no  longer  answer,  because  they  rep- 
resented too  exclusively  the  interior  or  domestic  foun- 
tains of  power,  and  not  the  external  relations  to  the 
terraqueous  globe  which  were  beginning  to  expand  with 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  413 

sudden  accelerations  of  velocity.  The  central  power 
could  not  be  forgotten  by  any  who  were  near  enough 
to  have  tasted  its  wrath ;  but  now  there  was  arising  a 
necessity  for  expressing,  by  some  great  unity  of  de- 
nomination, so  as  no  longer  to  lose  the  totality  in  the 
separate  partitions  —  the  enormity  of  the  circumference. 
A  necessity  for  this  had  repeatedly  been  found  in  nego- 
tiations, and  in  contests  ot  ceremonial  rank  with  oriental 
powers,  as  between  ourselves  and  China.  With  Persia, 
the  greatest  of  these  powers,  an  instinct  of  inevitable 
collision ^^  had,  for  some  time,  been  ripening.  It  be- 
came requisite  that  there  should  be  a  representative 
officer  for  the  whole  Roman  grandeur,  and  one  capable 
of  standing  on  the  same  level  as  the  Persian  king  of 
kings ;  and  this  necessity  arose  at  the  very  same 
moment  that  a  new  organization  was  required  of  Ro- 
man power  for  domestic  purposes.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  both  purposes  were  consulted  in  the  choice  of  tho 
title  of  Imperator.  The  chief  alternative  title  was  that 
of  Dictator.  But  to  this,  as  regarded  Romans,  there 
were  two  objections — first,  that  it  was  a  mere  provis' 
ional  title,  always  commemorating  a  transitional  emer 
gency,  and  pointing  to  some  happier  condition,  vvh'ch 
the  extraordinary  powers  of  the  officer  ought  soon  to 
establish.  It  was  in  the  nature  of  a  problem,  and  con- 
tinually asked  for  its  own  solution.  The  Dictator  dic- 
ated.  He  was  the  greatest  ipse  dixit  that  ever  was 
neard  of.  It  reminded  the  people  verbally  of  despotic 
sowers  and  autocracy.  Then  again,  as  regarded  foreign 
nations,  unacquainted  witn  the  Roman  constitution,  and 
throughout  the  servile  East  incapabie  of  understanding 
it,  the  title  of  Dictator  had  no  meaning  at  all.     The 


444  NOTES    ON    WALTER   SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

Speaker  is  a  magnificent  title  in  England,  and  makes 
brave  men  sometimes  shake  in  their  shoes.  But,  yet, 
if  from  rustic  ignorance  it  is  not  understood,  even  that 
title  means  nothing. 

Of  the  proudest  Speaker  that  England  ever  saw, 
namely.  Sir  Edward  Seymour,  it  is  recorded  that  his 
grandeur  failed  him,  sank  under  him,  like  the  New- 
gate drop,  at  the  very  moment  when  his  boiling  anger 
most  relied  upon  and  required  it.  He  was  riding 
near  Barnet,  when  a  rustic  wagoner  ahead  of  him, 
by  keeping  obstinately  the  middle  of  the  road,  pre- 
vented him  from  passing.  Sir  Edward  motioned  to 
him  magnificently,  that  he  must  turn  his  horses  to 
the  left.  The  carter,  on  some  fit  of  the  sulks  (perhaps 
from  the  Jacobinism  innate  in  man),  despised  this 
pantomime,  and  sturdily  persisted  in  his  mutinous 
disrespect.  On  which  Sir  Edward  shouted  —  "  Fellow, 
do  you  know  who  I  am  ? "  "  Noo-ak,"  replied  our 
rebellious  friend,  meaning,  when  faithfully  translated, 
no.  "  Are  you  aware,  sirrah."  said  Sir  Edward,  now 
thoroughly  incensed,  "  that  I  am  the  right  honorable 
the  Speaker  ?  At  your  peril,  sir,  in  the  name  of 
the  Commons  of  England,  in  Parliament  assembled, 
quarter  instantly  to  the  left."  This  was  said  in  that 
dreadful  voice  which  sometimes  reprimanded  penitent 
offenders,  kneeling  at  the  bar  of  the  House.  The 
carter,  more  struck  by  the  terrific  tones  than  the 
words,  spoke  an  aside  to  "  Dobbin  "  (his  "  thill  "  horse), 
which  procured  an  opening  to  the  blazing  Speaker, 
and  then  replied  thus  —  "  Speaker  !  Why,  if  so  be  as 
thou  canst  speak,  whoy-y-y-y-y  "  (in  the  tremulous  un- 
dulation with  which  he  was  used  to  utter  his  sovereign 


NOTES    ON   WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  445 

lA^hoah-h-h-h  to  his  horses),  "  whoy-^-y-y  didn't-a  speak 
afore  ?  "  The  wagoner,  it  seemed,  had  presumed  Sir 
Edward,  from  his  mute  pantomime,  to  be  a  dumb  man  ; 
and  all  which  the  proud  Speaker  gained,  by  the 
proclamation  of  his  style  and  title,  was,  to  be  exoner- 
ated from  that  suspicion,  but  to  the  heavy  discredit  of 
his  sanity.  A  Roman  Dictator  stood  quite  as  poor  a 
chance  with  foreigners,  as  our  Speaker  with  a  rustic. 
"  Dictator !  let  him  dictate  to  his  wife  ;  but  he  sha'n't 
dictate  to  us."  Any  title,  to  prosper  with  distant 
nations,  must  rest  upon  the  basis  of  arms.  And  this 
fell  in  admirably  with  the  political  exigency  for  Rome 
herself.  The  title  of  Imperator  was  liable  to  no 
jealousy.  Being  entirely  a  military  title,  it  clashed 
with  no  civil  pretensions  whatever.  Being  a  military 
title,  that  recorded  a  triumph  over  external  enemies  in 
the  field,  it  was  dear  to  the  patriotic  heart;  whilst  it 
directed  the  eye  to  a  quarter  where  all  increase  of 
power  was  concurrent  with  increase  of  benefit  to  the 
State.  And  again,  as  the  honor  had  been  hitherto 
purely  titular,  accompanied  by  some  auctoritas,  in  the 
Roman  sense  (not  always  honor,  for  Cicero  was  an 
Imperator  for  Cilician  exploits,  which  he  reports  with 
laughter),  but  no  separate  authority  in  our  modern 
sense.  Even  in  military  circles  it  was  open  to  little 
jealousy ;  nor  apparently  could  ripen  into  a  shape  that 
ever  would  be  so,  since,  according  to  all  precedent,  it 
would  be  continually  balanced  by  the  extension  of  the 
same  title,  under  popular  military  suffrage,  to  other 
fortunate  leaders.  Who  could  foresee,  at  the  inaugu- 
ration of  this  reform,  that  this  precedent  would  be 
abolished?   who   could    guess    that    henceforwards   no 


446      NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

more  triumphs  (but  only  a  sparing  distribution  of 
triumphal  decorations),  henceforvvards  no  more  im- 
peratorial  titles  for  anybody  out  of  the  one  consecrated 
family  ?  All  this  was  hidden  in  the  bosom  of  the 
earliest  Imperator ;  he  seemed,  to  the  great  mass  of 
the  people,  perfectly  innocent  of  civic  ambition ;  he 
rested  upon  his  truncheon,  that  is,  upon  S.  P.  Q.  R. ;  like 
Napoleon,  he  said,  "I  am  but  the  first  soldier  of  the 
republic,"  that  is,  the  most  dutiful  of  her  servants  ;  and, 
like  Napoleon,  under  cover  of  this  martial  paludamen- 
tum,  he  had  soon  filched  every  ensign  of  authority  by 
which  the  organs  of  public  power  could  speak.  But, 
at  the  beginning,  this  title  of  Imperator  was  the  one 
by  far  the  best  fitted  to  mask  all  this,  to  disarm  sus- 
picion, and  to  win  the  confidence  of  the  people. 

The  title,  therefore,  began  in  something  like  impos- 
ture ;  and  it  was  not  certainly  at  first  the  gorgeous 
title  into  which  it  afterwards  blossomed.  The  earth 
did  not  yet  ring  with  it.  The  rays  of  its  diadem  were 
not  then  the  first  that  said  All  hail!  to  the  rising  — 
the  last  that  said  Fareioell!  to  the  setting  sun.  But 
still  it  was  already  a  splendid  distinction ;  and,  in  a 
Roman  ear,  it  must  have  sounded  far  above  all  com- 
petition from  the  trivial  title  (in  that  day)  of  "  Rex," 
unless  it  were  the  Persian  Rex,  namely,  "  Rex  Regum." 
Romans  gave  the  title ;  they  stooped  not  to  accept  it.  ^^ 
Even  Mark  Antony,  in  the  all-magnificent  description 
of  him  by  Shakspeare's  Cleopatra,  could  give  it  in 
showers  —  kings  waited  in  his  ante-room,  "  and  from  his 
pocket  fell  crowns  and  sceptres."  The  title  of  Imperator 
was  indeed  repeated  in  glory  that  transcended  the  glory 
vf  earth,  but  it  was  not,  therefore,  sown  in  dishonor. 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  447 

We  are  all  astonished  at  Mr.  Landor  —  myself  and 
Jiree  hundred  select  readers.  What  can  he  mean  by 
tilting  against  the  Imperator  —  Semper  Augustus? 
Before  him  the  sacred  fire  (that  burned  from  century 
to  century)  went  pompously  in  advance  —  before  him 
the  children  of  Europe  and  Asia  —  of  Africa  and  the 
islands,  rode  as  dorypheroi ;  his  somatophulakes  were 
princes ;  and  his  empire,  when  burning  out  in  Byzan- 
tium, furnished  from  its  very  ruins  the  models  for  our 
western  honors  and  ceremonial.  Had  it  even  begun 
m  circumstances  of  ignominy,  that  would  have  been 
cured  easily  by  its  subsequent  triumph.  Many  are  the 
titles  of  earth  that  have  found  a  glory  in  looking  back 
to  the  humility  of  their  origin  as  its  most  memorable 
feature.  The  fisherman  who  sits  upon  Mount  Pala- 
tine, in  some  respects  the  grandest  of  all  potentates, 
as  one  wielding  both  earthly  and  heavenly  thunders,  is 
the  highest  example  of  this.  Some,  like  the  Mame- 
lukes of  Egypt  and  the  early  Janizaries  of  the  Porte, 
have  glorified  themselves  in  being  slaves.  Others, 
like  the  Caliphs,  have  founded  their  claims  to  men's 
homage  in  the  fact  of  being  successors  to  those  who 
(between  ourselves)  were  knaves.  And  once  it  hap- 
pened to  Professor  Wilson  and  myself,  that  we  trav- 
elled in  the  same  post-chaise  with  a  most  agreeable 
madman,  who,  amongst  a  variety  of  other  select  facts 
which  he  communicated,  was  kind  enough  to  give  us 
the  following  etymological  account  of  our  much- 
respected  ancestors  the  Saxons;  which  furnishes  a 
further  illustration  (quite  unknown  tj  the  learned)  of 
the  fact  —  that  honor  may  glory  in  deducing  itself 
from   circumstances  of  humility.     He   assured  us  that 


448       NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

these  worthy  Pagans  were  a  league,  comprehending 
every  single  brave  man  of  German  blood ;  so  much 
so,  that  on  sailing  away  they  left  that  unhappy  land 
in  a  state  of  universal  cowardice,  which  accounts  for  the 
licking  it  subsequently  received  from  Napoleon.  The 
Saxons  were  very  poor,  as  brave  men  too  often  are. 
In  fact  they  had  no  breeches,  and,  of  course,  no  silk 
stockings.  They  had,  however,  sacJcs,  which  they 
mounted  on  their  backs,  whence  naturally  their  name 
Sax-on.  Sacks-on!  was  the  one  word  of  command, 
and  that  spoken,  the  army  was  ready.  In  reality  it 
was  treason  to  take  them  off.  But  this  indorsement 
of  their  persons  was  not  assumed  on  any  Jewish  prin- 
ciple of  humiliation  ;  on  the  contrary,  in  the  most 
flagrant  spirit  of  defiance  to  the  whole  race  of  man. 
For  they  proclaimed  that,  having  no  breeches  nor  silk 
stockings  of  their  own,  they  intended,  wind  and  weather 
permitting,  to  fill  these  same  sacks  with  those  of  other 
men.  The  Welshmen  then  occupying  England  were 
reputed  to  have  a  good  stock  of  both,  and  in  quest  of 
this  Welsh  wardrobe  the  Sacks-on  army  sailed.  With 
what  success  it  is  not  requisite  to  say,  since  here  in 
one  post-chaise,  four  hundred  and  thirty  years  after, 
were  three  of  their  posterity,  the  professor,  the  mad- 
man, and  myself,  indorsees  (as  you  may  say)  of  the 
original  indorsers,  who  were  all  well  equipped  with 
the  object  of  this  great  Sacks-on  exodus. 

It  is  true  that  the  word  emperor  is  not  in  every 
situation  so  impressive  as  the  word  king.  But  that 
arises  in  part  from  the  latter  word  having  less  of 
specialty  about  it ;  it  is  more  catholic,  and  to  tha. 
extent   more   poetic ;    and  in   part   from   accidents   of 


NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR.       449 

posiuoa  which  disturb  the  relations  of  many  other 
titles  besides.  The  Proconsul  had  a  grander  sound,  as 
recrarded  military  expeditions,  than  the  principal  from 
whom  he  emanated.  The  Suram  left  a  more  awful 
remembrance  of  his  title  upon  the  comrades  of  Julian 
in  his  Persian  expedition  than  the  Surena's  master. 
And  there  are  many  cases  extant  m  which  the  word 
angel  strikes  a  deeper  key-  cases  where  power  is  con- 
templated.  as  well  as  beauty  or  mysterious  existence - 
than  the  word  archangel,  though  confessedly  higher  in 
the  hierarchies  of  heaven. 

Let  me  now  draw  the   reader's  attention    to    Count 
Mian,  a  great  conception  of  Mr.  Landor's. 

The    fable  of  Count   Julian   (that  is,  when   compre- 
bending  all  the  parties  to  that  web,  of  which  he  is  the 
centre)  may  be   pronounced    the  grandest  which  mod- 
ern history  unfolds.     It  is,  and  it  is  not,  scenical.     In 
some  portions  (as  the  fate  so  mysterious  of  Roderick, 
and  in  a  hio-h^r  sense  of  Julian)  it  rises  as  much  above 
what   the    stage  could  illustrate,  as    does  Thermopylae 
above   the   petty  details  of   narration.     The    man    was 
mad   that,  instead   of  breathing    from    a    hurricane    of 
harps  some  mighty  ode  over  Thermopylfe,  fancied  the 
httle  conceit  of  weaving  it  into  a  metrical  novel  or  suc- 
cession of  incidents.     Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  though 
rising   hicrher,  Count   Julian  sinks  lower  :   though  the 
passions  rise    far  above    Troy,  above    Mamthon,  above 
ThermopvliE,  and  are  such  passions  as  coald  not  have 
existed   under  Paganism,  in  some  respects  they  conde- 
scend  and  preconform    to    the    stage.     The    characters 
are  all  different,  all  marked,  all  in  position  ;  by  which, 
never  assuming  fixed  attitudes  as  to  purpose  and  mter 
29 


450  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR. 

est,  the  passions  are  deliriously  complex,  and  the  situa 
tions  are  of  corresponding  grandeur.  Metius  Fuffetius 
Alban  traitor !  that  wert  torn  limb  from  limb  by  antag 
onist  .yet  confederate  chariots,  thy  tortures,  seen  by 
shuddering  armies,  were  not  comparable  to  the  unseen 
tortures  in  Count  Julian's  mind;  who  —  whether  his 
treason  prospered  or  not,  whether  his  dear  outraged 
daughter  lived  or  died,  whetlier  his  king  were  tram- 
pled in  the  dust  by  the  horses  of  infidels,  or  escaped 
as  a  wreck  from  the  fiery  struggle,  whether  his  dear 
native  Spain  fell  for  ages  under  misbelieving  hounds, 
or,  combining  her  strength,  tossed  off  them,  but  then 
also  himself,  with  one  loathing  from  her  shores  —  saw, 
as  he  looked  out  into  the  mighty  darkness,  and  stretched 
out  his  penitential  hands  vainly  for  pity  or  for  pardon, 
nothing  but  the  blackness  of  ruin,  and  ruin  that  was 
too  probably  to  career  through  centuries.  "  To  this 
pass,"  as  Caesar  said  to  his  soldiers  at  Pharsalia,  "  had 
his  enemies  reduced  him;"  and  Count  Julian  might 
truly  say,  as  he  stretched  himself  a  rueful  suppliant 
before  the  Cross,  listening  to  the  havoc  that  was  driving 
onwards  before  the  dogs  of  the  Crescent,  "M?/  enemies, 
because  they  would  not  remember  that  I  was  a  man, 
forced  me  to  forget  that  I  was  a  Spaniard  :' — to  forget 
thee,  O  native  Spain, — and,  alas!  thee,  0  faith  of 
Christ !  " 

The  story  is  wrapped  in  gigantic  mists,  and  looms 
upon  one  like  the  Grecian  fable  of  CEdipus  ;  and  there 
will  be  great  reason  for  disgust,  if  the  deep  Arabic  re- 
searches now  going  on  in  the  Escurial,  or  at  Vienna, 
should  succeed  in  stripping  it  of  its  grandeurs.  For 
as  it   stands  at  present,  it   is  the   most  fearful   lessor 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  451 

extant  of  the  great  moral,  that  crime  propagates  crime, 
and  violence  inherits  violence ;  nay,  a  lesson  on  the 
awful  necessity  which  exists  at  times,  that  one  tremen- 
dous wrong  should  blindly  reproduce  itself  in  endless 
retaliato-y  wrongs.  To  have  resisted  the  dread  temp- 
tation, would  have  needed  an  angel's  nature;  to  have 
yielded,  is  but  human  ;  should  it,  then,  plead  in  vain 
for  pardon  ?  and  yet,  by  some  mystery  of  evil,  to  have 
perfected  this  human  vengeance,  is,  finally,  to  land  all 
parties  alike,  oppressor  and  oppressed,  in  the  passions 
of  hell. 

Mr.  Landor,  who  always  rises  with  his  subject,  and 
dilates  like  Satan  into  TenerifTe  or  Atlas,  when  he  sees 
before  him  an  antagonist  worthy  of  his  powers,  is  prob- 
ably the  one  man  in  Europe  that  has  adequately  con- 
ceived the  situation,  the  stern  self-dependency  and  the 
monumental  misery  of  Count  Julian.  That  sublimity 
of  penitential  grief,  which  cannot  accept  consolation 
from  man,  cannot  hear  external  reproach,  cannot  con- 
descend to  notice  insult,  cannot  so  much  as  see  the 
curiosity  of  by-standers ;  that  awful  carelessness  of 
all  but  the  troubled  deeps  within  his  own  heart,  and  of 
God's  spirit  brooding  upon  their  surface,  and  searching 
their  abysses,  never  was  so  majestically  described  as  in 
the  following  lines;  it  is  the  noble  Spaniard,  Hernando, 
comprehending  and  loving  Count  Julian  in  the  midst  of 
his  treasons,  who  speaks: — Tarik,  the  gallant  Moor, 
having  said  that  at  last  the  Count  must  be  happy;  foi 
that 

*'  Delicious  calm 
Follows  the  fierce  enjoyment  of  revenge." 

Hernando  replies  thus  :  — 


452       NOTES  ON  WALTER  SAVAGE  LANDOR. 

"  That  calm  was  never  his  ;  no  other  tvill  be. 
Not  victory,  that  o'ershadows  him,  sees  he  . 
No  airy  and  light  pas'iion  stirs  abroad 
To  ruffle  or  to  soothe  him  ;  all  are  quelled 
Beneath  a  mightier,  sterner,  stress  of  mind. 
Wakeful  he  sits,  and  lonely,  and  unmoved, 
Beyond  the  arrows,  shouts,  and  views  of  men. 
As  oftentimes  an  eagle,  ere  the  sun 
Throws  o'er  the  varying  earth  his  early  ray, 
Stands  solitary  —  stands  immovable 
Upon  some  highest  cliff,  and  rolls  his  eye, 
Clear,  constant,  unobservant,  unabased. 
In  the  cold  light  above  the  dews  of  morn." 

One  change  suggests  itself  to  me  as  possibly  for  the 
better,  namely,  if  the  magnificent  line  — 

"  Beyond  the  arrows,  shouts,  and  views  of  men  "  — 

were  transferred  to  the  secondary  object,  the  eagle, 
placed  after  what  is  ?iow  the  last  line,  it  would  give  a 
fuller  rythmus  to  the  close  of  the  entire  passage  ;  it 
would  be  more  literally  applicable  to  the  majestic  and 
solitary  bird,  than  to  the  majestic  and  solitary  man  ; 
whilst  the  figurative  expression  even  more  impassioned 
might  be  found  for  the  utter  self-absorption  of  Count 
Julian's  spirit  —  too  grandly  sorrowful  to  be  capable  of 
disdain. 

It  completes  the  picture  of  this  ruined  prince,  that 
Hernando,  the  sole  friend  (except  his  daughter)  still 
cleaving  to  him,  dwells  with  yearning  desire  upon  hi3 
death,  knowing  the  necessity  of  this  consummation  to 
his  own  secret  desires,  knowing  the  forgiveness  which 
would  settle  upon  his  memory  after  that  last  penalty 
should  have  been  paid  for  his  errors,  comprehending 
the  peace  that  would  then  swallow  up  the  storm  :  — 


NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAVAGE    LANDOR.  453 

"  For  hi3  own  sake  I  could  endure  his  loss. 
Pray  for  it,  and  thank  God  :  yet  mourn  I  mnst 
Him  aboTe  all,  so  great,  so  bountiful, 
So  blessed  once  !  " 

It  is  no  satisfaction  to  Hernando  that  Julian  should 
'  yearn  for  death  with  speechless  love,"  but  Julian  does 
so ;  and  it  is  in  vain  now  amongst  these  irreparable 
ruins,  to  wish  it  otherwise. 

"  'T  is  not  my  solace  that  't  is  ^  his  desire  : 
Of  all  who  pass  us  in  life's  drear  descent 
We  grieve  the  most  for  those  who  wished  to  die." 

How  much,  then,  is  in  this  brief  drama  of  Couni 
Julian,  chiselled,  as  one  might  think,  by  the'  hands  of 
that  sculptor  who  fancied  the  great  idea  of  chiselling 
Mount  Athos  into  a  demigod,  which  almost  insists  on 
being  quoted ;  which  seems  to  rebuke  and  frown  on 
one  for  not  quoting  it :  passages  to  which,  for  their 
solemn  grandeur,  one  raises  one's  hat  as  at  night  in 
walking  under  the  Coliseum  ;  passages  which,  for  their 
luxury  of  loveliness,  should  be  inscribed  on  the  phy- 
lacteries of  brides,  or  upon  the  frescoes  of  Ionia,  illus- 
trated by  the  gorgeous  allegories  of  Rubens. 

"  Sed  fugit  interea,  fugit  irreparibile  tempus, 
Singula  dum  capti  circumvectamur  amore." 

Yet,  reader,  in  spite  of  time,  one  word  more  on  the 
subject  we  are  quitting.  Father  Time  is  certainly  be- 
come very  importunate  and  clamorously  shrill  since  he 
has  been  fitted  up  with  that  horrid  railway  whistle  ; 
•ind  even  old  Mother  Space  is  growing  rather  imperti- 
aent,  when  she  speaks  out  of  monthly  journals  licensed 
^o  carry  but  small  quantities  of  bulky  goods  ;  yet  om 
xhing  I  must  say  in  spite  of  them  both. 


454  NOTES    ON    WALTER    SAV/.GE    LANDOR. 

It  is,  that  although  we  have  had  from  men  of  memo- 
rable genius,  Shelley  in  parf/cular,  both  direct  and 
mdirect  attempts  (some  of  them  powerful  attempts) 
to  realize  the  great  idea  of  Prometheus,  which  idea 
is  so  great,  that  (like  the  primeval  majesties  of  Hu- 
man Innocence,  of  Avenging  Deluges  that  are  past, 
of  Fiery  Visitations  yet  to  come)  it  has  had  strength 
to  pass  through  many  climates,  and  through  many 
religions,  without  essential  loss,  but  surviving,  without 
tarnish,  every  furnace  of  chance  and  change  ;  so  it  is 
that,  after  all  has  been  done  -which  intellectual  power 
could  do  since  ^scliylus  (and  since  Milton  in  his 
Satan),  no  embodiment  of  the  Promethean  situation, 
none  of  the  Promethean  character,  fixes  the  attentive 
eye  upon  itself  with  the  same  secret  feeling  of  fidelity 
to  the  vast  archetype,  as  Mr.  Landor's  "  Count  Julian." 
There  is  in  this  modern  aerolith  the  same  jewelly 
ustre,  which  cannot  be  mistaken ;  the  same  "  non 
imitabile  fulgur,"  and  the  same  character  of  "  fracture," 
or  cleavage,  as  mineralogists  speak,  for  its  beaming 
iridescent  grandeur,  redoubling  under  the  crush  of 
misery.  The  color  and  the  coruscation  are  the  same 
when  splintered  by  violence  ;  the  tones  of  the  rocky  *^ 
harp  are  the  same  when  swept  by  sorrow.  There  is 
the  same  spirit  of  heavenly  persecution  against  his 
enemy,  persecution  that  would  have  hung  upon  his 
rear,  and  "  burned  after  him  to  the  bottomless  pit," 
though  it  had  yawned  for  both  ;  there  is  the  same  gulf 
fixed  between  the  possibilities  of  their  reconciliation, 
the  same  immortality  of  resistance,  the  same  abysma. 
inguish.  Did  Mr.  Landor  consciously  cherish  thia 
^schylean  ideal  in  composing  "  Count  Julian "  ^  1 
know  not ;  there  it  is. 


MILTON  VERSUS  SOUTHEY  AND  LANDOR. 

This  conversation  is  doubly  interesting :  interesting 
by  its  subject,  interesting  by  its  interlocutors ;  for  the 
subject  is  Milton,  whilst  the  interlocutors  are  Southey 
and  Landor.  If  a  British  gentleman,  when  taking  his 
pleasure  in  his  well-armed  yacht,  descries,  in  some 
foreign  waters,  a  noble  vessel,  from  the  Thames  or  the 
Clyde,  riding  peaceably  at  anchor  —  and  soon  after, 
two  smart-looking  clippers,  with  rakish  masts,  bearing 
down  upon  her  in  company  —  he  slackens  sail:  his 
suspicions  are  slightly  raised ;  they  have  not  shown 
their  teeth  as  yet,  and  perhaps  all  is  right ;  but  there 
can  be  no  harm  in  looking  a  little  closer ;  and,  as- 
suredly, if  he  finds  any  mischief  in  the  wind  against 
his  countryman,  he  will  show  his  teeth  also ;  and, 
please  the  wind,  will  take  up  such  a  position  as  to  rake 
both  of  these  pirates  by  turns.  The  two  dialogists  are 
introduced  walking  out  after  breakfast,  '  each  his  Mil- 
ton in  his  pocket ; '  and  says  Southey,  '  Let  us  collect 
all  the  graver  faults  we  can  lay  our  hands  upon,  with- 
out a  too  minute  and  troublesome  research;'  —  just 
80 ;  there  would  be  danger  in  that  —  help  might  put 
off*  from  shore  ;  — '  not,'  says  he,  '  in  the  spirit  of  John- 
son, but  in  our  own.'  Johnson  we  may  suppose,  is 
some  old  ruffian  well  known  upon  that  coast ;  and 
faults '  may  be  a  flash  term  for  what  the  Americana 


456  MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOK. 

call  '  notions.'  A  part  of  the  cargo  it  clearly  is ;  and 
one  is  not  surprised  to  hear  Landor,  whilst  assenting 
to  the  general  plan  of  attack,  suggesting  in  a  whisper, 
'  that  they  should  abase  their  eyes  in  reverence  to  so 
great  a  man,  without  absolutely  closing  them  ; '  which 
I  take  to  mean  —  that,  without  trusting  entirely  to  theii 
boarders,  or  absolutely  closing  their  ports,  they  should 
depress  their  guns  and  fire  down  into  the  hold,  in  re- 
spect of  the  vessel  attacked  standing  so  high  out  of  the 
water.  After  such  plain  speaking,  nobody  can  wonder 
much  at  the  junior  pirate  (Landor)  muttering,  'It  will 
be  difficult  for  us  always  to  refrain.'  Of  course  it  will  • 
refraining  was  no  part  of  the  business,  I  should  fancy, 
taught  by  that  same  buccaneer,  Johnson.  There  is 
mischief,  you  see,  reader,  singing  in  the  air  — '  miching 
malhecho  '  —  and  it  is  our  business  to  watch  it. 

But,  before  coming  to  the  main  attack,  I  must  suffer 
myself  to  be  detained  for  a  few  moments  by  what  Mr. 
L.  premises  upon  the  '  moral '  of  any  great  fable, 
and  the  relation  which  it  bears,  or  should  bear,  to  the 
solution  of  such  a  fable.  Philosophic  criticism  is  so 
far  improved,  that,  at  this  day,  few  people,  who  have 
reflected  at  all  upon  such  subjects,  but  are  agreed  as 
to  one  point:  viz.,  that  in  metaphysical  language  the 
moral  of  an  epos  or  a  drama  should  be  immanent,  not 
transient ;  or,  otherwise,  that  it  should  be  vitally  dis- 
tributed through  the  whole  organization  of  the  tree,  not 
gathered  or  secreted  into  a  sort  of  red  berry  or  race- 
mus,  pendent  at  the  end  of  its  boughs.  This  view  Mr. 
Landor  himself  takes,  as  a  general  view  ;  but,  strange 
to  say,  by  some  Landorian  perverseness,  where  there 
occurs  a  memorable  exception  to  this  rule  (as  in  the 
Paradise  Lost'),  in  that  case  he  insists  upon  the  rule 


Mil  TON    VS.    S.OTJTHET    AND    LANDOR.  457 

in  its  rigor  —  the  rule,  and  nothing  hut  the  rule. 
Where,  on  the  contrary,  the  rule  does  really  and  ob- 
viously take  effect  (as  in  the  '  Iliad  '  and  '  Odyssey '), 
there  he  insists  upon  an  exceptional  case.  There  is 
a  moral,  in  his  opinion,  hanging  like  a  tassel  of  gold 
bullion  from  the  '  Iliad  ; '  —  and  what  is  it  ?  Some- 
thing so  fantastic,  that  I  decline  to  repeat  it.  As  well 
might  he  have  said,  that  the  moral  of  '  Othello'  was  — 
'  Try  Warren's  Blacking ! '  There  is  no  moral, 
little  or  big,  foul  or  fair,  to  the  '  Iliad.'  Up  to  the  17th 
book,  the  moral  might  seem  dimly  to  be  this  —  '  Gen- 
tlemen, keep  the  peace  :  you  see  what  comes  of  quar- 
relling.' But  there  this  moral  ceases ;  —  there  is  now 
a  break  of  guage  :  the  narrow  guage  takes  place  after 
this;  whilst  up  to  this  point,  the  broad  guage  —  viz., 
the  wrath  of  Achilles,  growing  out  of  his  turn-up  with 
Agamemnon  —  had  carried  us  smoothly  along  without 
need  to  shift  our  luggage.  There  is  no  more  quarrel- 
ling after  Book  17,  how  then  can  there  be  any  more 
moral  from  quarrelling }  If  you  insist  on  my  telling 
you  what  is  the  moral  of  the  '  Iliad,'  I  insist  upon  your 
telling  me  what  is  the  moral  of  a  rattlesnake  or  the 
moral  of  a  Niagara.  I  suppose  the  moral  is  —  that 
you  must  get  out  of  their  way,  if  you  mean  to  moralize 
much  longer.  The  going-up  (or  anabasis)  of  the 
Greeks  against  Troy,  was  a  fact ;  and  a  pretty  dense 
fact;  and,  by  accident,  the  very  first  in  which  all 
Greece  had  a  common  interest.  It  was  a  joint-stock 
concern  —  a  representative  expedition  —  whereas,  pre- 
viously there  had  been  none  ;  for  even  the  Argonautic 
expedition,  which  is  rather  of  the  darkest,  implied  no 
confederation  except  amongst  individuals.  How  could 
it  ?     For  the  Argr  is  supposed  to  have  measured  only 


458  MILTGN    VS.    SOIJTHET    AND    LANDOR. 

twenty-seven  tons :  how  she  would  have  been  classed 
at  Lloyd's  is  hard  to  say,  but  certainly  not  as  A  1. 
There  was  no  state-cabin ;  everybody,  demi-gods  and 
all,  pigged  in  the  steerage  amongst  beans  and  bacon. 
Greece  was  naturally  proud  of  having  crossed  the  her- 
ring-pond, small  as  it  was,  in  search  of  an  entrenched 
enemy ;  proud  also  of  having  licked  him  '  into  Al- 
mighty smash;'  this  was  sufficient;  or  if  an  imperti- 
nent moralist  sought  for  something  more,  doubtless  the 
moral  must  have  lain  in  the  booty.  A  peach  is  the 
moral  of  a  peach,  and  moral  enough ;  but  if  a  man 
tcill  have  something  better  —  a  moral  within  a  moral  — 
why,  there  is  the  peach-stone,  and  its  kernel,  out  of 
which  he  may  make  ratafia,  which  seems  to  be  the 
ultimate  morality  that  can  be  extracted  from  a  peach. 
Mr.  Archdeacon  Williams,  indeed,  of  the  Edinburgh 
Academy,  has  published  an  octavo  opinion  upon  the 
case,  which  asserts  that  the  moral  of  the  Trojan  war 
was  (to  borrow  a  phrase  from  children)  tit  for  tat.  It 
was  a  case  of  retaliation  for  crimes  against  Hellas, 
committed  by  Troy  in  an  earlier  generation.  It  may 
be  so  ;  Nemesis  knows  best.  But  this  moral,  if  it  ccn- 
cerns  the  total  expedition  to  the  Troad,  cannot  concern 
the  '  Iliad,'  which  does  not  take  up  matters  from  so 
early  a  period,  nor  go  on  to  the  final  catastrophe  of 
Ilium. 

Now,  as  to  the  '  Paradise  Lost,'  it  happens  that  there 
is  —  whether  there  ought  to  be  or  not  —  a  pure  golden 
moral,  distinctly  announced,  separately  contemplated, 
and  the  very  weightiest  ever  uttered  by  man  or  realized 
by  fable.  It  is  a  moral  rather  for  the  drama  of  a 
world  than  for  a  human  poem.  And  this  moral  is 
made   the    more    prominent   and    memorable   by   the 


MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY   AND    LANDOR.  459 

grandeur  of  its  annunciation.  The  jewel  is  not  more 
splendid  in  itself  than  in  its  setting.  Excepting  the 
well-known  passage  on  Athenian  oratory  in  the  '  Para- 
dise Regained,'  there  is  none  even  in  Milton  where  tht 
metrical  pomp  is  made  so  effectually  to  aid  the  pomp 
of  the  sentiment.  Hearken  to  the  way  in  which  a  roll 
or  dactyles  is  made  to  settle,  like  the  swell  of  the  ad- 
vancing tide,  into  the  long  thunder  of  billows  breaking 
foi  leagues  against  the  shore  : 

'  That  to  the  height  of  this  great  argirment 
I  may  assert  eternal  Providence.' 

Hear  what  a  motion,  what  a  tumult,  is  given  by  the 
dactylic  close  to  each  of  the  introductory  lines  !  And 
how  massily  is  the  whole  locked  up  into  the  peace  of 
heaven,  as  the  aerial  arch  of  a  viaduct  is  locked  up 
into  tranquil  stability  by  its  key-stone,  through  the  deeo 
spondaic  close, 

'  And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  man.' 

That  is  the  moral  of  the  Miltonic  epos ;  and  as  much 
grander  than  any  other  moral  formally  illustrated  by 
poets,  as  heaven  is  higher  than  earth. 

But  the  most  singular  moral,  which  Mr.  Landor  any- 
where discovers,  is  in  his  own  poem  of  '  Gebir.' 
Whether  he  still  adheres  to  it,  does  not  appear  from 
\he  present  edition.  But  I  remember  distinctly,  in  the 
original  edition,  a  Preface  (now  ^v^thdrawn)  in  which 
he  made  his  acknowledgments  to  some  book  read  at  a 
Welsh  Inn  for  the  outhne  of  the  story ;  and  as  to  the 
moral,  he  declared  it  to  be  an  exposition  of  that  most 
mysterious  offence.  Over- Colonization.  Much  I  mused, 
ai  my  youthful  simplicity,  upon  this  criminal  novelty. 
What  might  it  be  ?     Could  I,  by  mistake,  have  com 


460  MILTON   VS.    SOUTHEY    AND   LANDOR. 

mitted  it  myself?  Was  it  a  felony,  or  a  misde- 
meanor?—  liable  to  transportation,  or  only  to  fine  ana 
imprisonment  ?  Neither  in  the  Decemviral  Tables 
nor  in  the  Code  of  Justinian,  nor  the  maritime  Code 
of  Oleron,  nor  in  the  Canon  Law,  nor  the  Code  Napo- 
leon, nor  our  own  Statutes  at  large,  nor  in  Jeremy 
Bentham,  had  I  read  of  such  a  crime  as  a  possibility. 
Undoubtedly  the  vermin,  locally  called  Squatters,* 
both  in  the  wilds  of  America  and  Australia,  who  pre- 
occupy other  men's  estates,  have  latterly  illustrated  the 
logical  possibility  of  such  an  offence ;  but  they  were 
quite  unknown  at  the  era  of  Gebir.  Even  Dalica,  who 
knew  as  much  wickedness  as  most  people,  would  have 
stared  at  this  unheard  of  villany,  and  have  asked,  as 
eagerly  as  I  did — '  What  is  it  now?  Let's  have  a 
shy  at  it  in  Egypt.'  I,  indeed,  knew  a  case,  but 
Dalica  did  not,  of  shocking  over-colonization.  It  was 
the  case,  which  even  yet  occurs  on  out-of-the-way 
roads,  where  a  man,  unjustly  big,  mounts  into  the  in- 
side of  a  stage-coach  already  sufficiently  crowded.  In 
streets  and  squares,  where  men  could  give  him  a  wide 
berth,  they  had  tolerated  the  injustice  of  his  person ; 
but  now,  in  a  chamber  so  confined,  the  length  and 
breadth  of  his  wickedness  shines  revealed  to  every 
eye.     And  if  the  coach  should  upset,  which  it  would 

•  Squatters :  —  They  are  a  sort  of  self-elected  warming-pans. 
What  we  in  England  mean  by  the  political  term  '  warming-pans,' 
are  men  who  occupy,  by  consent,  some  official  place,  or  Par- 
liamentary seat,  until  the  proper  claimant  is  old  enough  in  law 
to  assume  his  rights.  When  the  true  man  comes  to  bed,  the 
warming-pan  respectfully  turns  out.  But  these  ultra-marina 
jfarming-pans  wouldn't  turn  out.  They  showed  fight,  and 
irouldu't  bear  of  the  true  man,  even  aa  a  bed-fellow. 


MILTOM    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR.  461 

not  be  the  less  likely  to  do  for  having  Mm  on  board, 
Bomebody  or  other  (perhaps  myself)  must  lie  beneath 
this  monster,  like  Enceladus  under  Mount  Etna,  call- 
ing upon  Jove  to  come  quickly  with  a  few  thunderbolts 
and  destroy  both  man  and  mountain,  both  succuhus  and 
incubus.,  if  no  other  relief  offered.  Meantime,  the  only 
case  of  over-colonization  notorious  to  all  Europe,  is 
that  which  some  German  traveller  (Riedesel,  I  think) 
has  reported  so  eagerly,  in  ridicule  of  our  supposed 
English  credulity;  viz.  —  the  case  of  the  foreign 
swindler,  who  advertised  that  he  would  get  into  a  quart 
bottle,  filled  Drury  Lane,  pocketed  the  admission 
money,  and  decamped,  protesting  (in  his  adieus  to  the 
spectators)  that  '  it  lacerated  his  heart  to  disappoint  so 
many  noble  islanders ;  but  that  on  his  next  visit  he 
would  make  full  reparation  by  getting  into  a  vinegar 
cruet.'  Now,  here  certainly  was  a  case  of  over- 
colonization,  not  perpetrated,  but  meditated.  Yet, 
when  one  examines  this  case,  the  crime  consisted  by 
no  means  in  doing  it,  but  in  not  doing  it ;  by  no  means 
in  getting  into  the  bottle,  but  in  not  getting  into  it. 
The  foreign  contractor  would  have  been  probably  a 
very  unhappy  man,  had  he  fulfilled  his  contract  by 
over-colonizing  the  bottle,  but  he  would  have  been 
decidedly  a  more  virtuous  man.  He  would  have 
redeemed  his  pledge ;  and,  if  he  had  even  died  in 
the  bottle,  we  should  have  honored  him  as  a  '  vir 
bonus,  cum  maid  fortund  compositus ; '  as  a  man  of 
honor  matched  in  single  duel  with  calamity,  and  also 
^s  the  best  of  conjurers.  Over-colonization,  therefore, 
except  in  the  one  case  of  the  stage-coach,  is  ajjparently 
no  crime ;  and  the  offence  of  King  Gebir,  in  my  eyes 
remains  a  mystery  to  this  day. 


462  MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR. 

What  next  solicits  notice  is  in  the  nature  of  a 
digression:  it  is  a  kind  of  parenthesis  on  Words- 
worth. 

'■Landor.  —  When  it  was  a  matter  of  wonder  how 
Keats,  who  was  ignorant  of  Greek,  could  have  written 
his  "  Hyperion,"  Shelley,  whom  envy  never  touched 
gave  as  a  reason  — "  because  he  was  a  Greek."  Words- 
worth, being  asked  his  opinion  of  the  same  poem 
called  it,  scoffingly,  "  a  pretty  piece  of  paganism  ;  "  yet 
he  himself,  in  the  best  verses  he  ever  wrote  —  and 
beautiful  ones  they  are  —  reverts  to  the  powerful  in- 
fluence of  the  "  pagan  creed."  ' 

Here  are  nine  lines  exactly  in  the  original  type. 
Now,  nine  tailors  are  ranked,  by  great  masters  of 
algebra,  as  z=  one  man ;  such  is  the  received  equa- 
tion ;  or,  as  it  is  expressed,  with  more  liveliness,  in  an 
old  English  drama,  by  a  man  who  meets  and  quarrels 
with  eighteen  tailors  —  '  Come,  hang  it !  Til  fight  you 
hoth."*  But,  whatever  be  the  algebraic  ratio  of  tailors 
to  men,  it  is  clear  that  nine  Landorian  lines  are  not 
always  equal  to  the  delivery  of  one  accurate  truth,  or 
to  a  successful  conflict  with  three  or  four  signal  errors. 
Firstly  —  Shelley's  reason,  if  it  ever  was  assigned,  is 
irrelevant  as  regards  any  question  that  must  have  been 
intended.  It  could  not  have  been  meant  to  ask  — 
Why  was  the  '  Hyperion '  so  Grecian  in  its  spirit .''  for 
jt  is  anything  but  Grecian.  We  should  praise  it  falsely 
to  call  it  so  ;  for  the  feeble,  though  elegant,  mythology 
of  Greece  was  incapable  of  breeding  anything  so  deep 
as  the  mysterious  portents  that,  in  the  '  Hyperion,''  run 
before  and  accompany  the  passing  away  of  divine  im- 
memorial dynasties.  Nothing  can  be  mere  impressive 
han  the  picture  of  Saturn  in  his  palsy  of  affliction,  and 


MILTON   VS.    SOUTHEY    AND   LANDOR.  463 

of  the  mighty  goddess  his  grand-daughter,  or  than  the 
secret  signs  of  coming  woe  in  the  palace  of  Hyperion. 
These  things  grew  from  darker  creeds  than  Greece 
had  ever  known  since  the  elder  traditions  of  Pro- 
metheus—  creeds  that  sent  down  their  sounding  plum- 
mets into  far  deeper  wells  within  the  human  spirit. 
What  had  been  meant,  by  the  question  proposed  to 
Shelley,  was  no  doubt  —  How  so  young  a  man  as  Keats, 
not  having  had  the  advantage  of  a  regular  classical 
education,  could  have  been  so  much  at  home  in  the 
details  of  the  elder  mythology  ?  Tooke's  '  Pantheon ' 
might  have  been  obtained  by  favor  of  any  English 
schoolboy,  and  Dumoustier's  '  Letlres  a  Emile  sur  la 
Mythologie  '  by  favor  of  very  many  young  ladies  ;  but 
these,  according  to  my  recollection  of  them,  would 
hardly  have  sufficed.  Spence's  '  Polymetis,'^  however, 
might  have  been  had  by  favor  of  any  good  library ; 
and  the  '  Bibliotheca '  of  Apollodorus,  who  is  the  cock 
of  the  walk  on  this  subject,  might  have  been  read  by 
favor  of  a  Latin  translation,  supposing  Keats  really 
unequal  to  the  easy  Greek  text.  There  is  no  wonder 
in  the  case  ;  nor,  if  there  had  been,  would  Shelley's 
kind  remark  have  solved  it.  The  treaiynent  of  the 
facts  must,  in  any  case,  have  been  due  to  Keats's 
genius,  so  as  to  be  the  same  whether  he  had  studied 
Greek  or  not :  the  facts.,  apart  from  the  treatment, 
must  in  any  case  have  been  had  from  a  book.  Sec- 
ondly—  Let  Mr.  Landor  rely  upon  it — that  Words- 
worth never  said  the  thing  ascribed  to  him  here  as  any 
formal  judgment,  or  what  Scottish  law  would  call 
deliverance,  upon  the  'Hyperion.'  .\s  to  what  he 
might  have  said  incidentally  and  collaterally ;  the 
meaning  of  word's  is  so  entirely  affected  by  their  posi 


464:  MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY   AND    LANDOR. 

tion  in  a  conversation  —  what  followed,  what  went  be- 
fore—  that  five  words  dislocated  from  their  context 
never  would  be  received  as  evidence  in  the  Queen's 
Bench.  The  court  which,  of  all  others,  least  strictly 
weighs  its  rules  of  evidence,  is  the  female  tea-table ; 
yet  even  that  tribunal  would  require  the  deponent  to 
strengthen  his  evidence,  if  he  had  only  five  detached 
words  to  produce.  Wordsworth  is  a  very  proud  man, 
as  he  has  good  reason  to  be ;  and  perhaps  it  was  1, 
myself,  who  once  said  in  print  of  him  —  that  it  is  not 
the  correct  way  of  speaking,  to  say  that  Wordsworth 
is  as  proud  as  Lucifer ;  but,  inversely,  to  say  of  Lucifer 
that  some  people  have  conceived  him  to  be  as  proud 
as  Wordsworth.  But,  if  proud,  Wordsworth  is  not 
haughty,  is  not  ostentatious,  is  not  anxious  for  display, 
is  not  arrogant,  and,  least  of  all,  is  he  capable  of  de- 
scending to  envy.  Who  or  what  is  it  that  he  should  be 
envious  of?  Does  anybody  suppose  that  Wordsworth 
would  be  jealous  of  Archimedes  if  he  now  walked 
upon  earth,  or  Michael  Angelo,  or  Milton  ?  Nature 
does  not  repeat  herself.  Be  assured  she  will  never 
make  a  second  Wordsworth.  Any  of  us  would  be 
jealous  of  his  own  duplicate  ;  and,  if  I  had  a  doppel- 
ganger,  who  went  about  personating  me,  copying  me, 
and  pirating  me,  philosopher  as  I  am,  I  might  (if  the 
Court  of  Chancery  would  not  grant  an  injunction 
against  him)  be  so  far  carried  away  by  jealousy  as  to 
attempt  the  crime  of  murder  upon  his  carcass ;  and  no 
great  matter  as  regards  him.  But  it  would  be  a  sad 
thing  for  me  to  find  myself  hanged ;  and  for  what,  1 
beseech  you  ?  for  murdering  a  sham,  that  was  eithei 
nobody  at  all,  or  oneself  repeated  once  too  often.  But 
if  you  show  to  Wordsworth  a  man  as  great  as  himself 


MILTON    VS.    SOTTTHEY    AND    LANDOR.  465 

Still  that  great  man  will  not  be  much  like  Words- 
worth—  the  great  man  will  not  be  Wordsworth's 
doppelganger.  If  not  impar  (as  you  say)  he  will  be 
dispar ;  and  why,  then,  should  Wordsworth  be  jealous 
of  him,  unless  he  is  jealous  of  the  sun,  and  of  Abd  el 
Kader,  and  of  Mr.  Waghorn  —  all  of  whom  carry  off  a 
great  deal  of  any  spare  admiration  which  Europe  has 
to  dispose  of.  But  suddenly  it  strikes  me  that  we  are 
all  proud,  every  man  of  us ;  and  I  daresay  with  some 
reason  for  it,  '  be  the  same  more  or  less.'  For  I  never 
came  to  know  any  man  in  my  whole  life  intimately, 
who  could  not  do  something  or  other  better  than  any- 
body else.  The  only  man  amongst  us  that  is  thoroughly 
free  from  pride,  that  you  may  at  all  seasons  rely  on  as 
a  pattern  of  humility,  is  the  pickpocket.  That  man  is 
so  admirable  in  his  temper,  and  so  used  to  pocketing 
anything  whatever  which  Providence  sends  in  his  way, 
that  he  will  even  pocket  a  kicking,  or  anything  in  that 
line  of  favors  which  you  are  pleased  to  bestow.  The 
smallest  donations  are  by  him  thankfully  received, 
provided  only  that  you,  whilst  half-blind  with  anger  in 
kicking  him  round  a  figure  of  eight,  like  a  dexterous 
skater,  will  but  allow  him  (which  is  no  more  than  fair) 
to  have  a  second  '  shy '  at  your  pretty  Indian  pocket- 
handkerchief,  so  as  to  convince  you,  on  cooler  reflec- 
tion, that  he  does  not  always  miss.  Thirdly  —  Mr. 
Landor  leaves  it  doubtful  what  verses  those  are  of 
Wordsworth's  which  celebrate  the  power  '  of  the  Pagan 
creed ; '  whether  that  sonnet  in  which  Wordsworth 
wishes  to  exchange  for  glimpses  of  human  life,  then 
%nd  in  those  circumstances^  '  foAorn,'  the  sight 

' Of  Proteus  coming  from  the  sea, 

And  hear  old  Triton  wind  his  wreathed  bom ; ' 
30 


466  MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR. 

whether  this,  or  the  passage  on  the  Greek  mythology 
in  '  The  Excursion.'  Whichever  he  means,  I  am  the 
last  man  to  deny  that  it  is  beautiful,  and  especially  if 
he  means  the  latter.  But  it  is  no  presumption  to  deny 
firmly  Mr,  Landor's  assertion,  that  these  are  '  the  best 
verses  Wordsworth  ever  wrote.'     Bless  the  man ! 

*  There  are  a  thousand  such  elsewhere. 
As  worthy  of  your  wonder  : '  — 

Elsewhere,  I  mean,  in  Wordsworth's  poems.  In  reality 
it  is  impossible  that  these  should  be  the  best ;  for  eveh 
if,  in  the  executive  part,  they  were  so,  which  is  not  the 
case,  the  veiy  nature  of  the  thought,  of  the  feeling, 
and  of  the  relation,  which  binds  it  to  the  general 
theme,  and  the  nature  of  that  theme  itself,  forbid  the 
possibility  of  merits  so  high.  The  whole  movement 
of  the  feeling  is  fanciful :  it  neither  appeals  to  what  is 
deepest  in  human  sensibilities,  nor  is  meant  to  do  so. 
The  result,  indeed,  serves  only  to  show  Mr.  Landor's 
Blender  acquaintance  with  Wordsworth.  And  what  is 
worse  than  being  slenderly  acquainted,  he  is  errone- 
ously acquainted  even  with  these  two  short  breathings 
from  the  Wordsworthian  shell.  He  mistakes  the  logic. 
Wordsworth  does  not  celebrate  any  power  at  all  in 
Paganism.  Old  Triton  indeed !  he's  little  better,  in 
respect  of  the  terrific,  than  a  mail-coach  guard,  nor 
half  as  good,  if  you  allow  the  guard  his  official  seat,  a 
coal-black  night,  lamps  blazing  back  upon  his  royal 
scarlet,  and  his  blunderbuss  correctly  slung.  Triton 
would  not  stay,  I  engage,  for  a  second  look  at  the  old 
Portsmouth  mail,  as  once  I  knew  it.  But,  alas  !  hotter 
things  than  ever  stood  on  Triton's  pins  are  now  as  little 
able  to  stand  up  for  themselves,  or  to  startle  the  silen,* 


MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR.  467 

helds  in  darkness,  with  the  sudden  flash  of  their 
glory  —  gone  before  it  had  full  come  —  as  Triton  is  to 
play  the  Freyschiitz  chorus  on  his  humbug  of  a  horn. 
But  the  logic  of  Wordsworth  is  this  —  not  that  the 
Greek  mythology  is  potent ;  on  the  contrary,  that  it 
is  weaker  than  cowslip  tea,  and  would  not  agitate 
the  nerves  of  a  hen  sparrow ;  but  that,  weak  as  it  is  — 
nay,  by  means  of  that  very  weakness  —  it  does  but  the 
better  serve  to  measure  the  weakness  of  something 
which  he  thinks  yet  weaker  —  viz.  the  death-like  torpor 
of  London  society  in  1808,  benumbed  by  conventional 
apathy  and  worldliness  — 

*  Heavy  as  frost,  and  deep  almost  as  life.' 

This  seems  a  digression  from  Milton,  who  is  prop- 
erly the  subject  of  this  colloquy.  But,  luckily,  it  is 
not  one  of  my  sins.  Mr.  Landor  is  lord  within  the 
house  of  his  own  book  ;  he  pays  all  accounts  what- 
ever ;  and  readers  that  have  either  a  bill,  or  bill  of  ex- 
ceptions, to  tender  against  the  concern,  must  draw 
upon  him.  To  Milton  he  returns  upon  a  very  dangerous 
topic  indeed  —  viz.  the  structure  of  his  blank  verse. 
I  know  of  none  that  is  so  trying  to  a  wary  man's 
nerves.  You  might  as  well  tax  Mozart  Avith  harshness 
in  the  divinest  passages  of  '  Don  Giovanni,'  as  Milton 
with  any  such  offence  against  metrical  science.  Be 
assured,  it  is  yourself  that  do  not  read  with  understand- 
ing, not  Milton  that  by  possibility  can  be  found  deaf  to 
the  demands  of  perfect  harmony.  You  are  tempted, 
after  walking  round  a  line  threescore  times,  to  exclaim 
at  last  —  'Well,  if  the  Fiend  himself  should  rise  up 
before  me  at  this  very  moment,  in  this  very  study  of 
tftine,  and  say  that  no  screw  was  loose  in  that  line, 


468  MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR. 

then    would    I    reply  — '  Sir,    with    submission,    yoa 

are .'     'What!'  suppose  the  Fiend  suddenly  to 

■  demand  in  thunder ,  '  what  am  I  ?  '  *  Horribly  wrong, 
you  wish  exceedingly  to  say ;  but,  recollecting  that 
some  people  are  choleric  in  argument,  you  confine 
yourself  to  the  polite  answer  —  'That,  with  deference 
to  his  better  education,  you  conceive  him  to  lie  ; '  — 
that's  a  bad  word  to  drop  your  voice  upon  in  talking 
with  a  fiend,  and  you  hasten  to  add  —  under  a  slight,  a 
very  slight  mistake.'  Ay,  you  might  venture  on  that 
opinion  with  a  fiend.  But  how  if  an  angel  should 
undertake  the  case  .''  And  angelic  was  the  ear  of  Mil- 
ton. Many  are  the  primd  facie  anomalous  lines  in 
Milton ;  many  are  the  suspicious  lines,  which  in  many 
a  book  I  have  seen  many  a  critic  peering  into,  with 
eyes  made  up  for  mischief,  yet  with  a  misgiving  that 
all  was  not  quite  safe,  very  much  like  an  old  raven 
looking  down  a  marrow-bone.  In  fact,  such  is  the 
metrical  skill  of  the  man,  and  such  the  perfection  of 
his  metrical  sensibility,  that,  on  any  attempt  to  take 
liberties  with  a  passage  of  his,  you  feel  as  when 
coming,  m  a  forest,  upon  what  seems  a  dead  lion ; 
perhaps  he  may  not  be  dead,  but  only  sleeping ;  nay, 
perhaps  he  may  not  be  sleeping,  but  only  shamming. 
And  you  have  a  jealousy,  as  to  Milton,  even  in  the 
most  flagrant  case  of  almost  palpable  error,  that,  after 
ail,  there  may  be  a  plot  in  it.  You  may  be  put  down 
with  shame  by  some  man  reading  the  line  otherwise, 
reading  it  with  a  difierent  emphasis,  a  different  caesura, 
or  perhaps  a  different  suspension  of  the  voice,  so  as  to 
bring  out  a  new  and  self-justifying  effect.  It  must  be 
added,  that,  in  reviewing  Milton's  metre,  it  is  quite 
necessary   to   have   such    books   as   '  Nare's   English 


MLTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR.  469 

Orthoepy'  {in  a  late  edition),  and  others  of  that  class, 
lying  on  the  table;  because  the  accentuaticn  of  Mil- 
ton's age  was,  in  many  words,  entirely  different  from 
ours.  And  Mr.  Landor  is  not  free  from  some  sus- 
picion of  inattention  as  to  this  point.  Over  and  above 
this  accentual  difference,  the  practice  of  our  elder 
dramat'.sts  in  the  resolution  of  the  final  tion  (which 
now  is  uniformly  pronounced  shon),  will  be  found  ex- 
ceedingly important  to  the  appreciation  of  a  writer's 
verse.  Cojitribution,  which  now  is  necessarily  pro- 
nounced as  a  word  of  four  syllables,  would  tben,*^  in 
verse,  have  five,  being  read  into  con-tri-hu-ce-on. 
Many  readers  will  recollect  another  word,  which  for 
years  brought  John  Kemble  into  hot  water  with  the  pit 
of  Drury  Lane.  It  was  the  plural  of  the  word  ache. 
This  is  generally  made  a  dissyllable  by  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists ;  it  occurs  in  the  '  Tempest.'  Prospero 
says  — 

♦  I  '11  fill  thy  bones  •with  aches.' 

What  follows,  which  I  do  not  remember  literatim,  is 
such  metrically  as  to  require  two  syllables  for  aches. 
But  how,  then,  was  this  to  be  pronounced  ?  Kemble 
thought  akies  would  sound  ludicrous  ;  aitches  therefore 
he  called  it :  and  always  the  pit  howled  like  a  famished 
menagerie,  as  they  did  also  when  he  chose  (and  he 
constantly  chose)  to  pronounce  beard  like  bird.  Many 
of  these  niceties  must  be  known,  before  a  critic  can 
ever  allow  himself  to  believe  that  he  is  right  in  obelizing, 
or  in  marking  with  so  much  as  a  ?  any  verse  whatever 
of  Milton's.  And  there  are  some  of  these  niceties,  I 
am  satisfied,  not  even  yet  fully  investigated. 

It  is,  however,  to  be  borne  in  mind,  after  all  allow 


470  MILTON   VS.    SOUTHEY   AND    LANDOR. 

ances  and  provisional  reservations  have  been  made 
that  Bentley's  hypothesis  (injudiciously  as  it  was 
managed  by  that  great  scholar)  has  really  a  truth  of 
fact  to  stand  upon.  Not  only  must  Milton  have  com- 
posed his  three  greatest  poems,  the  two  'Pai'adises 
and  the  '  Samson,'  in  a  state  of  blindness  —  but  sub« 
sequently,  in  the  correction  of  the  proofs,  he  must  have 
suffered  still  more  from  this  conflict  with  darkness, 
and,  consequently,  from  this  dependence  upon  care- 
less readers.  This  is  Bentley's  case :  as  lawyers  say 
'  My  lord,  that  is  my  case.'  It  is  possible  enough  to 
write  correctly  in  the  dark,  as  I  myself  often  do,  when 
losing  or  missing  my  lucifers  —  which,  like  some  elder 
lucifers,  are  always  rebelliously  straying  into  places 
where  they  can  have  no  business.  But  it  is  quite  im- 
possible to  correct  a  proof  in  the  dark.  At  least,  if 
there  is  such  an  art,  it  must  be  a  section  of  the  black 
art.  Bentley  gained  from  Pope  that  admirable  epithet 
of  slashing,  [^the  rihbalds — from  slashing  Bentley 
down  to  piddling  Theobalds,^  i.  e.  Tihbalds  as  it  was 
pronounced],  altogether  from  his  edition  of  the  'Para- 
dise Lost.'  This  the  doctor  founded  on  his  own 
hypothesis  as  to  the  advantage  taken  of  Milton's  blind- 
ness ;  and  corresponding  was  the  havoc  which  he 
made  of  the  text.  In  fact,  on  the  really  just  allegation 
that  Milton  must  have  used  the  services  of  an  amanu- 
ensis ;  and  the  plausible  one  that  this  amanuensis, 
being  often  weary  of  his  task,  would  be  likely  to  neg- 
lect punctilious  accuracy ;  and  the  most  improbable 
allegation  that  this  weary  person  would  also  be  very 
conceited,  and  add  much  rubbish  of  his  own;  Bentley 
resigned  himself  luxuriously,  without  the  whisper  of  a 
scruple,  to  his  own  sense  of  what  was  or  was  not 


MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND   LANDOR.  471 

poetic,  which  sense  happened  to  be  that  of  the  adder 
for  music.  The  deaf  adder  heareth  not  though  the 
musician  charm  ever  so  wisely.  No  scholarship, 
which  so  far  beyond  other  men  Bentley  had,  could 
gain  him  the  imaginative  sensibility  which,  in  a  degree 
so  far  beyond  average  men,  he  wanted.  Consequently 
the  world  never  before  beheld  such  a  scene  of  mas- 
aacre  as  his  '  Paradise  Lost'  exhibited.  He  laid  him- 
self down  to  his  work  of  extermination  like  the 
brawniest  of  reapers  going  in  steadily  with  his  sickle, 
coal  stripped  off,  and  shirt  sleeves  tucked  up,  to  deal 
with  an  acre  of  barley.  One  duty,  and  no  other, 
rested  upon  his  conscience;  one  voice  he  heard  — 
Slash  away,  and  hew  down  the  rotten  growths  of  this 
abominable  amanuensis.  The  carnage  was  like  that 
after  a  pitched  battle.  The  very  finest  passages  in 
every  book  of  the  poem  were  marked  by  italics,  as 
dedicated  to  fire  and  slaughter.  '  Slashing  Dick  '  went 
through  the  whole  forest,  like  a  woodman  marking 
with  white  paint  the  giant  trees  that  must  all  come  down 
in  a  month  or  so.  And  one  naturally  reverts  to  a 
passage  in  the  poem  itself,  where  God  the  Father  is 
supposed  to  say  to  his  Filial  assessor  on  the  heavenly 
throne,  when  marking  the  desolating  progress  of  Sin 
and  Death, — 

*  See  with  what  hayoc  these  fell  dogs  advance 
To  ravage  this  fair  world.' 

But  still  this  inhuman  extravagance  of  Bentley,  in 
'bllowmg  out  his  hypothesis,  does  not  exonerate  tut 
from  bearmg  in  mind  so  much  truth  as  that  hypothesis 
really  must  have  had,  from  the  pitiable  difficulties  of 
Vhe  great  poet's  situation. 


472  MILTON   VS.    SOUTHEY   AND   LANDOtt. 

My  own  opinion,  therefore,  upon  the  line,  for  in 
stance,  from  '  Paradise  Regained,'  wliich  Mr.  Landor 
appears  to   have    indicated    for  tlie    readei''s    amaze- 
ment, viz. :  — 

•  As  well  might  recommend 
Such  solitude  before  choicest  society,'  ^ 

is  —  that  it  escaped  revision  from  some  accident  call- 
ing off  the  ear  of  Milton  whilst  in  the  act  of  having  the 
proof  read  to  him.  Mr.  Landor  silently  prints  it  in 
italics,  without  assigning  his  objection  ;  but,  of  course, 
that  objection  must  be  —  that  the  line  has  one  foot  too 
much.  It  is  an  Alexandrine,  such  as  Dryden  scat- 
tered so  profusely,  without  asking  himself  why  ;  but 
which  Milton  never  tolerates  except  in  the  choruses 
of  the  Samson. 

♦  JVbt  difficult,  if  thou  hearken  to  me  '  — 

is  one  of  the  lines  which  Mr.  Landor  thinks  that  '  no 
authority  will  reconcile'  to  our  ears.  I  think  other- 
wise. The  caesura  is  meant  to  fall  not  with  the  comma 
after  difficult,  but  after  thou ;  and  there  is  a  most 
effective  and  grand  suspension  intended.  It  is  Satan 
who  speaks  —  Satan  in  the  wilderness  ;  and  he  marks, 
as  he  wishes  to  mark,  the  tremendous  opposition  of 
attitude  between  the  two  parties  to  the  temptation. 

•  Not  difficult  if  thou ' 

there  let  the  reader  pause,  as  if  pulling  up  suddenly 
four  horses  in  harness,  and  throwing  them  on  their 
haunches  —  not  difficult  if  thou  (in  some  mysterious 
Bense  the  son  of  God) ;  and  then,  as  with  a  burst  of 
thunder,  again  giving  the  reins  to  your  quadriga., 

* hearken  to  me :  * 


MILTON    VS.    SOtrXHEY    AND    LANDOR.  473 

that  is,  to  me,  that  am  the  Prince  of  the  Air,  and  able 
to  perform  all  my  promises  for  those  that  hearken  to 
my  temptations. 

Two  lines  are  cited  under  the  same  ban  of  irrecon- 
cilability to  our  ears,  but  on  a  very  different  plea. 
The  first  of  these  lines  is  — 

'  Launcelot,  or  Pellias,  or  Pellinore  ;  ' 
ITie  other 

'  Quintius,  Fabricius,  Curius,  Regulus.' 

The  reader  will  readily  suppose  that  both  are  objected 
to  as  '  roll-calls  of  proper  names.'  Now,  it  is  very 
true  that  nothing  is  more  offensive  to  the  mind  than 
the  practice  of  mechanically  packing  into  metrical 
successions,  as  if  packing  a  portmanteau,  names  with- 
out meaning  or  significance  to  the  feelings.  No  man 
ever  carried  that  atrocity  so  far  as  Boileau,  a  fact  of 
which  Mr.  Landor  is  well  aware  ;  and  slight  is  the 
sanction  or  excuse  that  can  be  drawn  from  him.  But 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  Virgil,  so  scrupulous  in 
finish  of  composition,  committed  this  fault.  I  remem 
ber  a  passage  ending 

' Noemonaque  Prytaninque  ; ' 

but,  having  no  Virgil  within  reach,  I  cannot  at  this 
moment  quote  it  accurately.  Homer,  with  more  ex- 
cuse, however,  from  the  rudeness  of  his  age,  is  a 
deadly  offender  in  this  way.  But  the  cases  from  Mil- 
ton are  very  different.  Milton  was  incapable  of  the 
Homeric  or  Virgilian  blemish.  The  objection  to  such 
rolling  musketry  of  names  is,  that  unless  interspersed 
with  epithets,  or  broken  into  irregular  groups  by  brief 
circumstances  of  parentage,  country,  or  romantic  ina 


474  MILTON    VS.    SOTJTHEY    AND    LANDOR. 

dent,  they  stand  audaciously  perking  up  their  heads 
like  lots  in  a  catalogue,  arrow-headed  palisades,  oi 
young  larches  in  a  nursery  ground,  all  occupying  the 
same  space,  all  drawn  up  in  line,  all  mere  iterations 
of  each  other.     But  in 

*  Quintius,  Fabricius,  Curius,  Regulus,* 

though  certainly  not  a  good  line  when  insulated, 
(better,  however,  in  its  connection  with  the  entire  suc- 
cession of  which  it  forms  part),  the  apology  is,  that  the 
massy  weight  of  the  separate  characters  enables  them 
to  stand  like  granite  pillars  or  pyramids,  proud  of  their 
self-supporting  independency. 

Mr.  Landor  makes  one  correction  by  a  simple  im- 
provement in  the  punctuation,  which  has  a  very  fine 
effect.  Rarely  has  so  large  a  result  been  distributed 
through  a  sentence  by  so  slight  a  change.  It  is  in  the 
'  Samson.'  Samson  says,  speaking  of  himself  (as 
elsewhere)  with  that  profound  pathos,  which  to  all 
hearts  invests  Milton's  own  situation  in  the  days  of  his 
old  age,  when  he  was  composing  that  drama  — 

'  Ask  for  this  great  deliverer  now,  and  find  him 
Eyeless  in  Gaza  at  the  mill  with  slaves.^ 

Thas  it  is  usually  printed  ;  that  is,  without  a  comma  in 
the  latter  line  ;  but,  says  Landor,  '  there  ought  to  be 
lommas  after  eyeless,  after  Gaza,  after  mill.''  And 
why  ?  because  thus  '  the  grief  of  Samson  is  aggravated 
at  every  member  of  the  sentence.'  He  (like  Milton) 
was  —  1.  bimd  ;  2.  in  a  city  of  triumphant  enemies; 
3.  working  for  daily  bread  ;  4.  herding  with  slaves 
Samson  literally,  and  Milton  with  those  whom  politi- 
cally he  regarded  as  such. 

Mr.   Landor   's   perfectly  wrong,  I   must   take   the 


MILTON   VS.    SOXJTHE'X    AND*  LANDOB.  475 

liberty    of  saying,    when    he    demurs   to    the    line    in 
Paradise  Regained  : ' 

'  From  that  placid  aspect  and  meek  regard,' 
on  the  ground  that  '  meek  regard  conveys  no  new  idea 
to  placid  aspect.''  But  aspect  is  the  countenance  of 
Christ  when  passive  to  the  gaze  of  others :  regard  is 
the  same  countenance  in  active  contemplation  of  those 
others  whom  he  loves  or  pities.  The  placid  aspect 
expresses,  therefore,  the  divine  rest ;  the  meek  regard 
expresses  the  divine  benignity :  the  one  is  the  self- 
absorption  of  the  total  Godhead,  the  other  the  eternal 
emanation  of  the  Filial  Godhead. 

'By  what  ingenuity,'  says  Landor,  'can  we  erect 
into  a  verse  — 

"  In  the  bosom  of  bliss,  and  light  of  light  ?  "  ' 
Now  really  it  is  by  my  watch  exactly  three  minutes 
too  late  for  him  to  make  that  objection.  The  court 
cannot  receive  it  now  ;  for  the  line  just  this  moment 
cited,  the  ink  being  hardly  yet  dry,  is  of  the  same 
identical  structure.  The  usual  iambic  flow  is  disturbed 
in  both  Imes  by  the  very  same  ripple,  viz.,  a  trochee 
in  the  second  foot,  placid  in  the  one  line,  bosom  in  the 
other.  They  are  a  sort  of  snags,  such  as  lie  in  the 
current  of  the  Mississippi.  There  they  do  nothing  but 
mischief.  Here,  when  the  lines  are  read  in  their 
entire  nexus,  the  disturbance  stretches  forwards  and 
backwards  with  good  effect  on  the  music.  Besides,  if 
it  did  not,  one  is  willing  to  take  a  snag  from  Milton. 
bn»  one  does  not  altogether  like  being  snagged  by  the 
Mississippi.  One  sees  no  particular  reason  for  bearing 
It,  if  one  only  knew  how  to  be  revenged  on  a  river. 
But,  of  these  metrical  skirmishes,   though  full  of 


J76      MILTON. t)S.  SOUTHEY  AND  LANDOR. 

mpoi*tance  to  the  impassioned  text  of  a  great  poei 
(for  mysterious  is  the  life  that  connects  all  modes 
of  passion  with  rhythmus),  let  us  suppose  the  casual 
reader  to  have  had  enough.  And  now  at  closing  for 
the  sake  of  change,  let  us  treat  him  to  a  harlequin 
trick  upon  another  theme.  Did  the  reader  ever  happen 
to  see  a  sheriff's  officer  arresting  an  honest  gentle- 
man, who  was  doing  no  manner  of  harm  to  gentle  or 
simple,  and  immediately  afterwards  a  second  sheriff's 
officer  arresting  the  first  —  by  which  means  that 
second  officer  merits  for  himself  a  place  in  history ; 
for  at  the  same  moment  he  liberates  a  deserving 
creature  (since  an  arrested  officer  cannot  possibly  bag 
his  prisoner),  and  he  also  avenges  the  insult  put  upon 
that  worthy  man?  Perhaps  the  reader  did  not  ever 
see  such  a  sight ;  and,  growing  personal,  he  asks  me, 
in  return,  if  I  ever  saw  it.  To  say  the  truth,  I  never 
did ;  except  once,  in  a  too-flattering  dream ;  and 
though  I  applauded  so  loudly  as  even  to  waken  myself, 
and  shouted  '  encore.^'  yet  all  went  for  nothing ;  and  I 
am  still  waiting  for  that  splendid  exemplification  of 
retributive  justice.  But  why  ?  Why  should  it  be  a 
spectacle  so  uncommon  ?  For  surely  those  official 
arresters  of  men  must  want  arresting  at  times  as  well 
as  better  people.  At  least,  however,  en  attendant  one 
may  luxuriate  in  the  vision  of  such  a  thing ;  and  the 
reader  shall  now  see  such  a  vision  rehearsed.  He 
shall  see  Mr.  Landor  arresting  Milton  —  Milton,  of  all 
men !  —  for  a  flaw  in  his  Roman  erudition  ;  and  then 
he  shall  see  me  instantly  stepping  up,  tapping  Mr. 
Landor  on  the  shoulder,  and  saying,  '  Officer,  you're 
wanted ; '  whilst  to   Milton   I  say,  touching   my  hat, 

Now,  sir,  be  off     run   for  your  life,  whilst  I  holfl 


MILTON    VS.    SOUTHEY    AND    LANDOR.  477 

Jiis  man  in  custody,  lest  he  should  fasten  on  you 
Rgain.' 

What  Milton  had  said,  speaking  of  the  ^watchful 
cherubim,'  was  — 

'  Four  faces  each 
Had,  like  a  double  Janus ; ' 

Upon  which  Southey  —  but,  of  course,  Landor,  ven- 
triloquizing through  Southey —  says,  '  Better  left  this 
to  the  imagination :  double  Januses  are  queer  figures.' 
^'ot  at  all.  On  the  contrary,  they  became  so  common, 
that  finally  there  were  no  other.  Rome,  in  her  days 
of  childhood,  contented  herself  with  a  two-faced 
Janus;  but,  about  the  time  of  the  first  or  second 
CjBsar,  a  very  ancient  statue  of  Janus  was  exhumed, 
which  had  four  faces.  Ever  afterwards,  this  sacred 
resurgent  statue  became  the  model  for  any  possible 
Janus  that  could  show  himself  in  good  company.  The 
quadrifrons  Janus  was  now  the  orthodox  Janus ;  and 
it  would  have  been  as  much  a  sacrilege  to  rob  him  of 
any  single  face  as  to  rob  a  king's  statue  *  of  its  horse. 
One  thing  may  recall  this  to  Mr.  Lander's  memory.  I 
think  it  was  Nero,  but  certainly  it  was  one  of  the  first 
six  Csesars,  that  built,  or  that  finished,  a  magnificent 
temple  to  Janus ;  and  each  face  was  so  managed  as 
to  point  down  an  avenue  leading  to  a  separate  market- 
olace.     Now,  that  there  were  four  market-places,  I 

*  A  king's  statue :  —  Till  very  lately  the  etiquette  of  Europe 
was,  that  none  but  royal  persons  could  have  equestrian  statues. 
Lord  Hopetoun,  the  reader  will  object,  is  allowed  to  have  a  horse, 
m  St.  Andrew's  Square,  Edinburgh.  True,  but  observe  that  he 
is  not  allowed  to  mount  him.  The  first  person,  so  far  as  I  re- 
member, that,  not  being  royal,  has,  in  our  island,  seated  himself 
lomfortably  in  the  saddle,  is  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 


478  MILTON   VS.    SOITTHEY    AND   LANDOP.. 

tvill  make  oath  before  any  Justice  of  the  Peace.  One 
was  called  the  Forum  Juliiim,  one  the  Forum  Augus- 
tum,  a  third  the  Forum  Transitorium :  what  the 
fourth  was  called  is  best  known  to  itself,  for  really  I 
forget.  But  if  anybody  says  that  perhaps  it  was 
called  the  Forum  Landorium,  I  am  not  the  man  to 
object ;  for  few  names  have  deserved  such  an  honor 
more,  whether  from  those  that  then  looked  forward  into 
futurity  with  one  face,  or  from  our  posterity  that  will 
look  back  into  the  vanishing  past  with  aj»  ^ther. 


ORTHOGRAPHIC  MUTINEERS. 

WITH   A   SPECIAL  REFERENCE   TO   THE   WORKS   OF   WALTEE 
SAVAGE   LANDOR. 

As  we  are  all  of  us  crazy  when  tte  wind  sets  m 
»ome  pai-ticular  quarter,  let  not  Mr.  Landor  be  angry 
with  me  for  suggesting  that  he  is  outrageously  crazy 
upon  one  solitary  subject  of  spelling.  It  occurs  to 
me,  as  a  plausible  solution  of  his  fury  upon  this  point, 
that  perhaps  in  his  earliest  school-days,  when  it  is 
understood  that  he  was  exceedingly  pugnacious,  he 
may  have  detested  spelling,  and  (like  Roberto  the 
DevUleS*)  have  found  it  more  satisfactory  for  all  par- 
ties, that  when  the  presumptuous  schoolmaster  differed 
from  him  on  the  spelling  of  a  word,  the  question 
between  them  should  be  settled  by  a  stand-up  fight. 
Both  parties  would  have  the  victory  at  times  ;  and 
if,  according  to  Pope's  expression,  'justice  rul'd  the 
ball,'  the  schoolmaster  (who  is  always  a  vHlain)  would 
be  floored  three  times  out  of  four ;  no  great  matter 
whether  wrong  or  not  upon  the  immediate  point  of 
spelling  discussed.  It  is  in  this  way,  viz.,  from  the 
urregular  adjudications  upon  litigated  spelling,  which 
mus°t  have  arisen  under  such  a  mode  of  investigating 
the  matter,  that  we  account  for  Mr.  Lander's  being 
sometimes  in  the  right,  but  too  often  (with  regard  to 


480  OKTHOGBA.PHIC    MUTINEERS. 

long  words)  egregiously  in  tlie  wrong.  As  lie  grew 
stronger  and  taller,  he  would  be  coming  more  and 
more  amongst  polj-syllables,  and  more  and  more 
would  be  getting  the  upper  hand  of  the  schoolmaster ; 
80  that  at  length  he  would  have  it  all  his  own  way , 
one  round  would  decide  the  turn-up ;  and  thencefor- 
wards  his  spelling  would  become  frightful.  Now,  I 
myself  detested  spelling  as  much  as  all  people  ought 
to  do,  except  Continental  compositors,  who  have  extra 
fees  for  doctoring  the  lame  spelling  of  ladies  and  gen- 
tlemen. But,  unhappily,  I  had  no  power  to  thump  the 
schoolmaster  into  a  conviction  of  his  own  absurdities ; 
which,  however,  I  greatly  desired  to  do.  Still,  my 
nature,  powerless  at  that  time  for  any  active  recusancy, 
was  strong  for  passive  resistance  ;  and  that  is  the 
hardest  to  conquer.  I  took  one  lesson  of  this  infernal 
art,  and  then  declined  ever  to  take  a  second ;  and  in 
fact,  I  never  did.  Well  I  remember  that  unique  morn- 
ing's experience.  It  was  the  first  page  of  Entick's 
Dictionary  that  I  had  to  get  by  heart ;  a  sweet  sen- 
timental task  ;  and  not,  as  may  be  fancied,  the  spelling 
only,  but  the  horrid  attempts  of  this  depraved  Entick 
to  explain  the  supposed  meaning  of  words  that  proba- 
bly had  none ;  many  of  these,  it  is  my  belief,  Entick 
himself  forged.  Among  the  strange,  grim-looking 
words,  to  whose  acquaintance  I  was  introduced  on  that 
unhappy  morning,  were  abalienate  and  ahlaqueation  — 
most  respectable  words,  I  am  fully  persuaded,  but  so 
exceedingly  retired  in  their  habits,  that  I  never  once 
had  the  honor  of  meeting  either  of  them  in  any  book, 
pamphlet,  journal,  whether  in  prose  or  numerous 
ver«e,  though  haunting  such  society  myself  all  my 
Ufe.     I  also  formed  the  acquaintance,  at  that  time,  o' 


OETHOGRAPHIC    MXTTINEEES.  481 

the  word  abacus,  which,  as  a  Latin  word,  I  haAO  often 
used,  but,  as  an  English,  one,,  I  really  never  had  occa- 
sion to  spell,  until  this  very  moment.  Yet,  after  all, 
what  harm  comes  of  such  obstinate  recusancy  against 
ortliography  ?  I  was  an  '  occasional  conformist ;  '  I 
conformed  for  one  morning,  and  never  more.  But,  for 
all  that,  I  spell  as  well  as  my  neighbors;  and  I  can 
spell  ailaqueation  besides,  which  I  suspect  that  some 
of  them  can  not. 

My  own  spelling,  therefore,  went  right,  because  I 
was  left  to  nature,  with  strict  neutrality  on  the  part  of 
the  authorities.  Mr.  Lander's  too  often  went  wrong, 
because  he  was  thrown  into  a  perverse  channel  by  his 
continued  triumphs  over  the  prostrate  schoolmaster. 
To  toss  up,  as  it  were,  for  the  spelling  of  a  word,  by 
the  best  of  nine  rounds,  inevitably  left  the  impression 
that  chance  governed  all ;  and  this  accounts  for  the 
extreme  capriciousness  of  Landor. 

It  is  a  work  for  a  separate  dictionary  in  quarto  to 
record  all  the  proposed  revolutions  in  spelling  through 
which  our  English  blood,  either  at  home  or  in  Ameri- 
ca, has  thrown  off,  at  times,  fhe  surplus  energy  that 
consumed  it.  I  conceive  this  to  be  a  sort  of  cutaneous 
aifection,  like  nettle-rash,  or  ringworm,  through  which 
the  patient  gains  relief  for  his  own  nervous  distraction, 
whilst,  in  fact,  he  does  no  harm  to  anybody  :  for  usu- 
ally he  forgets  his  own  reforms,  and  if  he  should  not, 
everybody  else  does.  Net  to  travel  back  into  the 
«;eventeenth  century,  and  the  noble  arnry  of  short-hand 
writers  who  have  all  made  Avar  upon  orthography,  for 
secret  purposes  of  their  own,  even  in  the  last  century, 
and  in  the  present,  what  a  list  of  eminent  rebels  against 
the  spelling-book  might  be  called  up  to  answer  for 
31 


482  OKTHOGRAPHIC    MTTTINEERS. 

their  -wickedness  at  the  bar  of  the  Old  Bailev,  if  any- 
body would  be  kind  enough  to  make  it  a  felony 
Cowper,  for  instance,  too  modest  and  too  pensive  to 
raise  upon  any  subject  an  open  standard  of  rebellion, 
yet,  in  quiet  Olney,  made  a  small  emeute  as  to  the 
word  '  Grecian.'  Everybody  else  was  content  with 
one  '  e ; '  but  he  recollecting  the  cornucopia  of  es, 
which  Providence  had  thought  fit  to  empty  upon  the 
mother  word  Greece,  deemed  it  shocking  to  disinherit 
the  poor  child  of  its  hereditary  wealth,  and  wrote  it, 
therefore,  Greecian  throughout  his  Homer.  Such  a 
modest  reform  the  sternest  old  Tory  could  not  find  in 
his  heart  to  denounce.  But  some  contagion  must  have 
collected  about  this  word  Greece ;  for  the  next  man, 
who  had  much  occasion  to  use  it  —  viz.,  Mitford^  — 
who  wrote  that  '  History  of  Greece '  so  eccentric,  and 
so  eccentrically  praised  by  Lord  Byron,  absolutely 
took  to  spelling  like  a  heathen,  slashed  right  and  left 
against  decent  old  English  words,  until,  in  fact,  the 
whole  of  Entick's  Dictionary  [ablaqueation  and  all) 
was  ready  to  swear  the  peace  against  him.  Mitford, 
in  course  of  time,  slept  with  his  fathers ;  his  grave,  I 
trust,  not  haunted  by  the  injured  words  whom  he  had 
tomahawked  ;  and,  at  this  present  moment,  the  Bishop 
of  St.  David's  reigneth  in  his  stead.  His  Lordship, 
uound  over  to  episcopal  decorum,  has  hitherto  been 
sparing  in  his  assaults  upon  pure  old  English  words : 
but  one  may  trace  the  insurrectionary  taint,  passing 
down  from  Cowper  through  the  Avord  Grecian,  in 
jtiany  of  his  Anglo-Hellenic  forms.  For  instance,  he 
insists  on  our  saying  —  not  Heracleidcs  and  PelopidcB, 
as  we  all  used  to  do  —  but  Heracleids  and  Pehpids 
A.  list  of  my  Lord's  barbarities,  in  many  other  casea^ 


OfiTHOaEAPHIC    MTjTINEEES.  483 

upon  unprotected  words,  poor  shivering  aliens  that  fall 
into  his  power,  when  thrown  upon  the  coast  of  his  dio- 
cese, I  had  —  had,  I  say,  for,  alas  !  fuit  Ilium. 

Yet,  really,  one  is  ashamed  to  linger  on  cases  so 
mild  as  those,  coming,  as  one  does,  in  the  order  of 
atrocity,  to  Elphinstone,  to  Noah  Webster,  a  Yankee 
—  which  word  means,  not  an  American,  but  that 
separate  order  of  Americans,  growing  in  Massachu- 
setts, Rhode  Island,  or  Connecticut,  in  fact,  a  New 
Englander^  —  and  to  the  rabid  Ritson.  Noah  would 
naturally  have  reduced  us  all  to  an  antediluvian  sim- 
plicity. Shem,  Ham,  and  Japheth,  probably  separated 
in  consequence  of  perverse  varieties  in  spelling  ;  so 
that  orthographical  unity  might  seem  to  him  one  con- 
dition for  preventing  national  schisms.  But  as  to  the 
rabid  Ritson,  who  can  describe  his  vagaries  ?  What 
great  arithmetician  can  furnish  an  index  to  his  absur- 
dities, or  what  great  decipherer  furnish  a  key  to  the 
principles  of  these  absurdities  ?  In  his  very  title- 
pages,  nay,  in  the  most  obstinate  of  ancient  techni- 
calities, he  showed  his  cloven  foot  to  the  astonished 
reader.  Some  of  his  many  works  were  printed  in 
Pall-Mail ;  now,  as  the  world  is  pleased  to  pronounce 
that  word  Pel-Mel,  thus  and  no  otherwise  (said  Rit- 
son) it  shall  be  spelled  for  ever.  Whereas,  on  the 
contrary,  some  men  would  have  said  :  The  spelling  is 
well  enough,  it  is  the  public  pronunciation  which  is 
wrong.  This  ought  to  be  Paul- Maul ;  or,  perhaps  — 
agreeably  to  the  sound  which  we  give  to  the  a  in  such 
rords  as  what,  quantity,  want  —  still  better,  and  with 
more  gallantry,  Poll-Moll.  The  word  Mr.,  again,  in 
Ritson's  reformation,  must  have  astonished  the  Post- 
office.     He.  insisted  that  this  cabalistical-looking  form, 


484  OBTHOGEAPHIC    MTJTINEEKS. 

wliicli  might  as  reasonably  be  translated  into  monstst 
was  a  direct  fraud  on  the  national  language,  quite  as 
bad  as  clipping  the  Queen's  coinage.  How,  then, 
should  it  be  written  ?  Reader  !  reader  !  that  you  will 
ask  such  a  question !  mister,  of  course  ;  and  mind  that 
you  put  no  capital  m ;  unless,  indeed,  you  are  speak- 
ing of  some  great  gun,  some  mister  of  misters,  such  as 
Mr.  Pitt  of  old,  or  perhaps  a  reformer  of  spelling. 
The  plural,  again,  of  such  words  as  romance,  age, 
horse,  he  wrote  romancees,  agees,  horsees ;  and  upon 
the  following  equitable  consideration,  that,  inasmuch 
as  the  e  final  in  the  singular  is  mute,  that  is,  by  a 
general  vote  of  the  nation  has  been  allowed  to  retire 
upon  a  superannuation  allowance,  it  is  abominable  to 
call  it  back  upon  active  service  —  like  the  modern 
Chelsea  pensioners  — ^as  must  be  done,  if  it  is  to  bear 
the  whole  weight  of  a  separate  syllable  like  ces.  Con- 
sequently, if  the  nation  and  Parliament  mean  to  keep 
faith,  they  are  bound  to  hire  a  stout  young  e  to  run  in 
the  traces  with  the  old  original  e,  taking  the  whole 
work  off  his  aged  shoulders.  Volumes  would  not  suf- 
fice to  exhaust  the  madness  of  Eitson  upon  this  sub- 
ject. And  there  was  this  peculiarity  in  his  madness 
over  and  above  its  clamorous  ferocity,  that  being  no 
classical  scholar  (a  meagre  self-taught  Latinist,  and 
no  Grecian  at  all),  though  profound  as  a  black-letter 
scholar,  he  cared  not  one  straw  for  ethnographic  rela- 
tions of  the  words,  nor  unity  of  analogy,  which  are  the 
principles  that  generally  have  governed  reformers  of 
spelling.  He  was  an  attorney,  and  moved  constantly 
under  the  monomaniac  idea  that  an  action  lay  on  be- 
balf  of  the  misused  letters,  mutes,  liquids,  vowels,  and 
diphthongs,  against  somebody  or  other  (John  Doe,  was 


OBTHOGKAPflIC    MUTINEERS.  485 

it,  or  Richard  Roe  ?)  for  trespass  on  any  rights  of  theirs 
which  an  attorney  might  trace,  and  of  course  for  any 
direct  outrage  upon  their  persons.  Yet  no  man  was 
more  systematically  an  oflfender  in  both  ways  than 
himself ;  tying  up  one  leg  of  a  quadruped  word,  and 
forcing  it  to  run  upon  three  ;  cutting  off  noses  and 
ears,  if  he  fancied  that  equity  required  it :  and  living 
in  eternal  hot  water  with  a  language  which  he  pre- 
tended eternally  to  protect. 

And  yet  all  these  fellows  were  nothing  in  compari- 
son of  Mr.^'  Pinkerton.  The  most  of  these  men  did 
but  ruin  the  national  spelling  ;  but  Pinkerton  —  the 
monster  Pinkerton  —  proposed  a  revolution  which 
would  have  left  us  nothing  to  spell.  It  is  almost  in- 
credible —  if  a  book  regularly  printed  and  published, 
bought  and  sold,  did  not  remain  to  attest  the  fact  — 
that  this  horrid  barbarian  seriously  proposed,  as  a 
glorious  discovery  for  refining  our  language,  the  fol- 
lowing plan.  All  people  were  content  wdth  the  com- 
pass of  the  English  language  :  its  range  of  expression 
was  equal  to  anything  ;  but,  unfortunately,  as  com- 
pared with  the  sweet,  orchestral  languages  of  the 
Bouth  —  Spanish  the  stately,  and  Italian  the  lovely  — 
it  wanted  rhythmus  and  melody.  Clearly,  then,  the 
one  supplementary  grace,  which  it  remained  for  mod- 
ern art  to  give,  is  that  every  one  should  add  at  discre- 
tion 0  and  a,  ino  and  ano,  to  the  end  of  the  English 
words.  The  language,  in  its  old  days,  should  be 
taught  struttare  strultissimainente.  As  a  specimen, 
Mr.  Pinkerton  favored  us  mth  his  own  version  of  a 
famous  passage  in  Addison,  viz.,  '  The  Vision  of 
Mirza '  The  passage,  which  begins  thus,  '  As  I  sat 
nn  the  top  of  a  rock,'  being  translated  into,  '  As  I  sattc 


486  ORTHOGKAPHIC    MTTTIIfEEBS. 

on  tlie  toppino  of  a  rocko,'  &c.  But  luckilissime  thiA 
proposalio  of  the  ahsurdissimo  Pinkertonio^  was  not 
adoptado  by  anyhody-ini  whatever -ano. 

Mr.  Landor  is  more  learned,  and  probably  more 
consistent  in  his  assaults  upon  the  established  spelling 
than  most  of  these  elder  reformers.  But  that  does  not 
make  him  either  learned  enough  or  consistent  enough. 
He  never  ascends  into  Anglo-Saxon,  or  the  many  cog- 
nate languages  of  the  Teutonic  family,  which  is  indis- 
pensable to  a  searching  inquest  upon  our  language ; 
he  does  not  put  forward  in  this  direction  even  the 
slender  qualifications  of  Home  Tooke.  •  But  Greek 
and  Latin  are  quite  unequal,  when  disjoined  from  the 
elder  wheels  in  our  etymological  system,  to  the  work- 
ing of  the  total  machinery  of  the  English  language. 
Mr.  Landor  proceeds  upon  no  fixed  principles  in  his 
changes.  Sometimes  it  is  on  the  principle  of  internal 
analogy  within  itself,  that  he  would  distort  or  retrotort 
the  language ;  sometimes  on  the  principle  of  externeJ 
analogy  with  its  roots  ;  sometimes  on  the  principle  of 
euphony,  or  of  metrical  convenience.  Even  within 
such  principles  he  is  not  uniform.  All  well-built 
English  scholars,  for  instance,  know  that  the  word 
fealty  cannot  be  made  into  a  dissyllable :  trisyllabic 
it  ever  was ^  with  the  elder  poets —  Spenser,  Milton, 
&c.  ;  and  so  it  is  amongst  all  the  modern  poets  who 
have  taken  any  pains  with  their  English  studies  :   e.  g, 

'  The  eagle,  lord  of  land  and  sea, 
Stoop'd  —  down  to  pay  him  fe-al-ty.' 

It  is  dreadful  to  hear  a  man  say  feal-ty  in  any  case ; 
but  here  it  is  luckily  impossible.  Now,  Mr.  Lando* 
generally  is  correct,  and  trisects  the  word ;  but  once 


OBTHOGBAPHIC    MTJTINEEB8. 


487 


u  least,  lie  bisects  it.     I  complain,  besides,  that  Mr, 
Landor,  in  urging  the  authority  of  Milton  for  ortbo- 
grapbic  innovations,  does  not  always  distinguisb  as  to 
Milton's  motives.     It  is  true,  as  be  contends,  tbat,  in 
some  instances,  Milton  reformed  the  spelling  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  Italian  precedent :    and  certainly  without 
blame ;   as  in  sovran,  sdeign,  which  ought  not  to  be 
printed   (as  it  is)   with  an  elision  before  the  s,  as  if 
short  for  disdain;  but  in  other  instances  Milton's  mo- 
tive had  no  reference  to  etymology.     Sometimes  it  was 
this.     In  Milton's  day  the  modern  use  of  italics  was 
nearly   unknown.     Everybody  is  aware   that,  in  our 
authorized  version  of  the  Bible,  published  in  Milton's 
infancy,  italics  are  never  once  used  for  the  purpose  of 
emphasis  — but  exclusively  to  indicate  such  words  or 
auxiHary  forms  as,  though  implied  and  virtualhj  pres- 
ent in  the  original,  are  not  textually  expressed,  but 
must  be   so  in   English,  from  the  different  genius  of 
the  language.**    Now,  this  want  of  a  proper  technical 
resource  amongst  the  compositors  of  the  age,  for  indi- 
cating a  peculiar  stress  upon  the  word,  evidently  drove 
Milto'n  into  some  perplexity  for  a  compensatory  contri- 
vance.    It  was   unusually  requisite  for  him,  with  his 
elaborate  metrical  system  and  his  divine  ear,  to  have 
an  art  for  throwing  attention  upon  his  accents,  and 
apon  his  muffling  of  accents.     When,  for  instance,  he 
wishes  to  direct  a  bright  jet  of  emphasis  upon  the  pos- 
sessive pronoun  their,  he  writes  it  as  we  now  write  it. 
But,  when  he  wishes  to  take  off  the  accent,  he  writes 
t  thir.^^    Like  Ritson[he  writes  therefor  and  wherefor 
mthout  the  final  e ;   not  regarding   the  analogy,  but 
lirgly  the  metrical  quantity  :   for  it  was  shocking  to 
tuB°cla8sical  feeling  that  a  sound  so  shor^  to  the  eai 


488  OETHOGKAPHIC    MITTINEEHS. 

should  be  represented  to  the  eye  by  so  long  a  combi- 
nation as  fore  ;  and  tbe  more  so,  because  uneducated 
people  did  then,  and  do  now,  often  equilibrate  the 
accent  between  the  two  syllables,  or  rather  make  the 
quantity  long  in  both  syllables,  whilst  giving  an  over- 
balance of  the  accent  to  the  last.  The  '  Paradise  Lost,* 
being  printed  during  Milton's  blindness,  did  not  receive 
the  full  and  consistent  benefit  of  his  spelling  reforms, 
which  (as  I  have  contended)  certainly  arose  partly  in 
the  imperfections  of  typography  at  that  eera ;  \but  such 
changes  as  had  happened  most  to  impress  his  ear  with 
a  sense  of  their  importance,  he  took  a  special  trouble, 
even  under  all  the  disadvantages  of  his  darkness,  to 
have  rigorously  adopted.  He  must  have  astonished 
the  compositors,  though  not  quite  so  much  as  the 
tiger-cat  Ritson  or  the  Mr.  (viz.  monster)  Pinkerton  — 
each  after  his  kind  —  astonished  their  compositors. 

But  the  caprice  of  Mr.  Landor  is  shown  most  of  all 
upon  Greek  names.  Nous  autres  say  '  Aristotle,'  and 
are  quite  content  with  it  until  we  migrate  into  some 
extra-superfine  world ;  but  this  title  will  not  do  for 
him  :  '  Aristotles '  it  must  be.  And  why  so  ?  Be- 
cause, answers  the  Landor,  if  once  I  consent  to  say 
Aristotle,  then  I  am  pledged  to  go  the  whole  hog ; 
and  perhaps  the  next  man  I  meet  is  Empedocles, 
whom,  in  that  case,  I  must  call  Empedocle.  Well,  do 
so.  Call  him  Empedocle  ;  it  will  not  break  his  back, 
which  seems  broad  enough.  But,  now,  mark  the  con- 
tradictions in  which  Mr.  Landor  is  soon  landed.  He 
says,  as  everybody  says,  Terence,  and  not  Terentius, 
Horace,  and  not  Horatius  ;  but  he  must  leave  ofi"  such 
horrid  practices,  because  he  dares  not  call  Lucretius  by 
vhe  analogous  name  of  Lucrece,  since  that  would  be 


ORTHOGRAPHIC    MXTTINEEBS.  489 

putting  a  she  instead  of  a  he ;  nor  Propertius  by  the 
name  of  Properce,  because  that  would  be  speaking 
French  instead  of  English.  Next  he  says,  and  con- 
tinually he  says,  Virgil  for  Virgilius.  But,  on  that 
principle,  he  ought  to  say  Valer  for  Valerius  ;  and  yet 
again  he  ought  not :  because  as  he  says  Tully  and  not 
Tull  for  Tullius,  so  also  is  he  bound,  in  Christian 
equity,  to  say  Valery  for  Valer ;  but  he  cannot  say 
either  Valer  or  Valery.  So  here  we  are  in  a  mess. 
Thirdly,  I  charge  him  with  saying  Ovid  for  Ovidius: 
which  I  do,  which  everybody  does,  but  which  he  must 
not  do  :  for  if  he  means  to  persist  in  that,  then,  upon 
his  own  argument  from  analogy,  he  must  call  Didius 
Julianus  by  the  shocking  name  of  Did,  which  is  the 
same  thing  as  Tit  —  since  T  is  D  soft.  Did  was  a 
very  great  man  indeed,  and  for  a  very  short  time 
indeed.  Probably  Did  was  the  only  man  that  ever 
bade  for  an  empire,  and  no  mistake,  at  a  public  auc- 
tion. Think  of  Did's  bidding  for  the  Roman  empire ; 
nay,  think  also  of  Did's  having  the  lot  actually 
knocked  down  to  him;  and  of  Did's  going  home  to 
dinner  with  the  lot  in  his  pocket.  It  makes  one  per- 
spire to  think  that,  if  the  reader  or  myself  had  been 
living  at  that  time,  and  had  been  prompted  by  some 
whim  within  us  to  bid  against  him  —  that  is,  he  or  I 
—  should  actually  have  come  down  to  posterity  by  the 
abominable  name  of  Anti-Did.  All  of  us  in  England 
say  Livy  when  speaking  of  the  great  historian,  not 
Livius.  Yet  Livius  Andronicus  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  indulge  with  that  brotherly  name  of  Livy. 
Marcus  Antonius  is  called  —  not  by  Shakspeare  only, 
but  by  all  the  world  —  Mark  Antony ;  but  who  is  it 
that   ever   called  Marcus   Brutus  by  the  affectionate 


490  ORTHOGEAPHIC    MT7TINEEE8. 

name  o^  Mark  Brute  ?  '  Keep  your  distance,'  we  say 
to  that  very  doubtful  brute,  '  and  expect  no  pet  names 
from  us.'  Finally,  apply  the  principle  of  abbreviation, 
involved  in  the  names  of  Pliny,  Livy,  Tully,  all  sub- 
stituting y  for  ius,  to  Marius  —  that  grimmest  of  grim 
visions  that  rises  up  to  us  from  the  phantasmagoria  of 
Roman  history.  Figure  to  yourself,  reader,  that  trucu- 
lent face,  trenched  and  scarred  with  hostile  swords, 
carrying  thunder  in  its  ominous  eye-brows,  and  fright- 
ening armies  a  mile  off  with  its  scowl,  being  saluted 
by  the  tenderest  of  feminine  names,  as  '  My  Mary.' 

Not  only,  therefore,  is  Mr.  Landor  inconsistent  in 
these  innovations,  but  the  innovations  themselves,  sup- 
posing them  all  harmonized  and  established,  would 
but  plough  up  the  landmarks  of  old  hereditary  feel- 
ings. We  learn  oftentimes,  by  a  man's  bearing  a 
good-natured  sobriquet  amongst  his  comrades,  that  he 
is  a  kind-hearted,  social  creature,  popular  with  them 
all !  And  it  is  an  illustration  of  the  same  tendency, 
that  the  scale  of  popularity  for  the  classical  authors 
amongst  our  fathers,  is  registered  tolerably  well,  in  a 
gross  general  way,  by  the  difference  between  having 
and  not  having  a  familiar  name.  If  we  except  the  first 
Caesar,  the  mighty  Caius  Julius,  who  was  too  majestic 
to  invite  familiarity,  though  too  gracious  to  have 
repelled  it,  there  is  no  author  whom  our  forefathers 
loved,  but  has  won  a  sort  of  Christian  name  in  the 
land.  Homer,  and  Hesiod,  and  Pindar,  we  all  say ; 
we  cancel  the  alien  us ;  but  we  never  say  Theocrit  for 
Theocritus.  Anacreon  remains  rigidly  Grecian  marble  ; 
but  that  is  only  because  his  name  is  not  of  a  plastic 
•brm  —  else  everybody  loves  the  sad  old  fellow.  The 
•ame  bar  to  familiarity  existed  in  the  names  of  the 


OETHOGKAPHIC    MITTINEEB8.  491 

tragic    poets,  except    perhaps   for   ^schylus ;    -who, 
however,   like   Caesar,   is    too    awful    for   a   caressing 
name.       But    Roman    names    were,    generally,    more 
flexible.     Livy  and  Sallust  have   ever  been  favorites 
with  men  ;   Livy  with  everybody  ;   Sallust,  in  a  degree 
that  may  be  called  extravagant,  with  many  celebrated 
Frenchmen,  as  the  President  des  Brosses,  and  in  our 
own  days   with  M.   Lerminier,  a  most  eloquent  and 
original    writer    {'Etudes    Historiques')  ;     and    two 
centuries  ago,  with  the  greatest  of  men,  John  Milton, 
in  a  degree  that  seems  to  me  absolutely  mysterious. 
These    writers  are  baptized  into   our  society  —  have 
gained  a  settlement  in  our  parish:    when  you  call  a 
man  Jack,  and  not  Mr.  John,  it's  plain  you  like  him. 
But,  as  to  the  gloomy  Tacitus,  our  fathers  liked  him 
not.     He  was  too  vinegar  a  fellow  for  them  ;  nothing 
hearty  or  genial  about  him ;  he  thought  ill  of  every- 
body ;  and  we  all  suspect  that,  for  those  times,  he  was 
perhaps  the  worst  of  the  bunch  himself.     Accordingly, 
this  Tacitus,  because  he  remained  so  perfectly  tacit  for 
our  jolly  old  forefathers'  ears,  never  slipped  into  the 
name  Tacit  for  their  mouths ;  nor  ever  will,  I  predict, 
for  the  mouths  of  posterity.     Coming  to   the  Roman 
poets,  I  must  grant  that  three  great  ones,  viz.,  Lucre- 
tius,   Statius,  and  Valerius   Flaccus,  have  not  been 
complimented  with  the  freedom  of  our  city,  as   they 
should  have  been,  in  a  gold  box.     I  regret,  also,  the 
ill  fortune,  in  this  respect,    of   Catullus,   if  he  was 
really  the  author  of  that  grand  headlong  dithyrambic, 
the  Atys :  he  certainly  ought  to  have  been  ennobled 
by  the  title  of  Catull.     Looking  to  very  much  of  his 
writings,  much  more  I  regret  the  case  of  Plautus ;  and 
'  am  sure  that  if  her  Majesty  would  waiTant  his  bear- 


492  OKTHOGEAPHIC    MTTTINEEES. 

ing  tlie  name  and  anns  of  Plant  in  all  time  coming,  it 
would  gratify  many  of  us.  As  to  the  rest,  or  those 
that  anybody  cares  about,  Horace,  Virgil,  Ovid,  Lucan, 
Martial,  Claudian,  all  have  been  raised  to  the  peerage. 
Ovid  was  the  great  poetic  favorite  of  Milton ;  and  not 
without  a  philosophic  ground :  his  festal  gayety,  and 
the  brilliant  velocity  of  his  aurora  horealis  intellect, 
forming  a  deep  natural  equipoise  to  the  mighty  gloom 
and  solemn  planetary  movement  in  the  mind  of  the 
other ;  like  the  wedding  of  male  and  female  counter- 
parts. Ovid  was,  therefore,  rightly  Milton's  favorite. 
But  the  favorite  of  all  the  world  is  Horace.  Were 
there  ten  peerages,  were  there  three  blue  ribbons, 
vacant,  he  ought  to  have  them  all. 

Besides,  if  Mr.  Landor  could  issue  decrees,  and  even 
harmonize  his  decrees  for  reforming  our  Anglo-Grecian 
spelling  —  decrees  which  no  Council  of  Trent  could 
execute,  without  first  rebuilding  the  Holy  Office  of  the 
Inquisition  —  still  there  would  be  little  accomplished. 
The  names  of  all  continental  Europe  are  often  in  con- 
fusion, from  diff'erent  causes,  when  Anglicized  :  Ger- 
man names  are  rarely  spelled  rightly  by  the  laity  of 
our  isle  :  Polish  and  Hungarian  never.  Many  foreign 
towns  have  in  England  what  botanists  would  call  trivial 
names ;  Leghorn,  for  instance,  Florence,  Madrid,  Lis- 
bon, Vienna,  Munich,  Antwerp,  Brussels,  the  Hague, 
—  all  unintelligible  names  to  the  savage  Continental 
native.  Then,  if  Mr.  Landor  reads  as  much  of  Anglo- 
Indian  books  as  I  do,  he  must  be  aware  that,  for  many 
years  back,  they  have  all  been  at  sixes  and  sevens ;  so 
that  now  most  Hindoo  words  are  in  masquerade,  and 
we  shall  soon  require  English  pundits  in  Leadenhall 
Street.^    How  does  he  like,  for  instance,  Sipahee,  the 


OB.XHOQEAPHIC    MUTINEEBS.  493 

modem  form  for  Sepoy  1  or  Tepheen  for  Tiffin  7  At 
this  rate  of  metamorphosis,  absorbing  even  the  conse- 
crated names  of  social  meals,  we  shall  soon  cease  to 
understand  what  that  disjune  was  which  his  sacred 
Majesty  graciously  accepted  at  Tillietudlem.  But  even 
elder  forms  of  oriental  speech  are  as  little  harmonized 
in  Christendom.  A  few  leagues  of  travelling  make 
the  Hebrew  unintelligible  to  us ;  and  the  Bible  be- 
comes a  Delphic  mystery  to  Englishmen  amongst  the 
countrymen  of  Luther.  Solomon  is  there  called  Sala- 
mo  ;  Samson  is  called  Simson,  though  probably  he 
never  published  an  edition  of  Euclid.  Nay,  even  in 
this  native  isle  of  ours,  you  may  be  at  cross  purposes 
on  the  Bible  with  your  own  brother.  I  am,  myself, 
next  door  neighbor  to  Westmoreland,  being  a  Lan- 
cashire man ;  and,  one  day,  I  was  talking  with  a 
Westmoreland  farmer,  whom,  of  course,  I  ought  to 
have  understood  very  well ;  but  I  had  no  chance  with 
him :  for  I  could  not  make  out  who  that  No  wias,  con- 
cerning whom  or  concerning  which,  he  persisted  in 
talking.  It  seemed  to  me,  from  the  context,  that  No 
must  be  a  man,  and  by  no  means  a  chair  ;  but  so  very 
negative  a  name,  you  perceive,  furnished  no  positive 
hints  for  solving  the  problem.  I  said  as  much  to  the 
farmer,  who  stared  in  stupefaction.  '  '  What,'  cried 
he,  '  did  a  far-larn'd  man,  like  you,  fresh  from  Oxford, 
never  hear  of  No,  an  old  gentleman  that  should  have 
been  drowned,  but  was  not,  when  all  his  folk  were 
drowned  r  '  '  Never,  so  help  me  Jupiter,'  was  my 
reply  :  '  never  heard  of  him  to  this  hour,  any  more 
than  of  Yes,  an  old  gentleman  that  should  have  been 
aanged,  but  was  not,  when  all  his  folk  were  hanged. 
Populous  No  —  I  had  read  of  in  the  Prophets ;    but 


494  OBTHOGEAPHIC    MTJTINEEE8. 

that  was  not  an  old  gentleman.'  It  turned  out  that 
the  farmer  and  all  his  compatriots  in  bonny  Martindale 
had  been  taught  at  the  parish  school  to  rob  the  Patri- 
arch Noah  of  one  clear  moiety  appertaining  in  fee 
simple  to  that  ancient  name.  But  afterwards  I  found 
that  the  farmer  was  not  so  entirely  absurd  as  he  had 
seemed.  The  Septuagint,  indeed,  is  clearly  against 
him ;  for  there,  as  plain  as  a  pikestaff,  the  farmer 
might  have  read  No^'i.  But,  on  the  other  hand.  Pope, 
not  quite  so  great  a  scholar  as  he  Avas  a  poet,  yet  still 
a  fau*  one,  always  made  Noah  into  a  monosyllable  ; 
and  that  seems  to  argue  an  old  English  usage  ;  though 
I  really  believe  Pope's  reason  for  adhering  to  such  an 
absurdity  was  with  a  prospective  view  to  the  rhymes 
How,  or  row,  or  stow  (an  important  idea  to  the  Ark), 
which  struck  him  as  likely  words,  in  case  of  any  call 
for  writing  about  Noah. 

The  long  and  the  short  of  it  is  —  that  the  whole 
world  lies  in  heresy  or  schism  on  the  subject  of  orthog- 
raphy. All  climates  alike  groan  under  heterography. 
It  is  absolutely  of  no  use  to  begin  with  one's  own 
grandmother  in  such  labors  of  reformation.  It  is  toil 
thrown  away  :  and  as  nearly  hopeless  a  task  as  the 
proverb  insinuates  that  it  is  to  attempt  a  reformation  in 
that  old  lady's  mode  of  eating  eggs.  She  laughs  at 
one.  She  has  a  vain  conceit  that  she  is  able,  out  of 
her  own  proper  resources,  to  do  both,  viz.,  the  spelling 
and  the  eating  of  the  eggs.  And  all  that  remains  for 
,  philosophers,  like  Mr.  Landor  and  myself,  is  —  to  turn 
away  in  sorrow  rather  than  in  anger,  dropping  a  silent 
tear  for  the  poor  old  lady's  infatuation. 


ON  WORDSWORTH'S  POETRY. 


Heretofore,  upon  one  impulse  or  another,  I  have 
retraced  fugitive  memorials  of  several  persons  cele- 
brated in  our  own  times ;  but  I  have  never  undertaken 
an  examination  of  any  man's  writings.  The  one  labor 
is,  comparatively,  without  an  effort ;  the  other  is  both 
difficult,  and,  with  regard  to  contemporaries,  is  invidi- 
ous. In  genial  moments  the  characteristic  remem- 
brances of  men  expand  as  fluently  as  buds  travel  into 
blossoms;  but  criticism,  if  it  is  to  be  conscientious  and 
profound,  and  if  it  is  applied  to  an  object  so  unlimited 
as  poetry,  must  be  almost  as  unattainable  by  any  hasty 
effort  as  fine  poetry  itself.  "  Thou  hast  convinced 
me,"  says  Rasselas  to  Imlac,  "  that  it  is  impossible  to  be 
a  poet ;  "  so  vast  had  appeared  to  be  the  array  of  qualifi- 
cations. But,  with  the  same  ease,  Imlac  might  have 
convinced  the  prince  that  it  was  impossible  to  be  a  critic. 
And  hence  it  is,  that,  in  the  sense  of  absolute  and 
philosophic  criticism,  we  have  little  or  none ;  for,  before 
^hat  can  exist,  we  must  have  a  good  psychology  ;  whereas, 
It  present,  we  have  none  at  all. 

If,  however,  it  is  more  difficult  to  write  critical 
BKetches  than  sketches  of  persoi.ty"  recollections,  often 


496  ON  Wordsworth's  POETRr. 

It  IS  much  less  connected  with  painful  scruples.  Of 
books,  resting  only  on  grounds  which,  in  sincerity,  you 
believe  to  be  true,  and  speaking  without  anger  or  scorn 
you  can  hardly  say  the  thing  which  ought  to  be  taken 
amiss.  But  of  men  and  women  you  dare  not,  and  must 
nf^t,  tell  all  that  chance  may  have  revealed  to  you. 
Sometimes  you  are  summoned  to  silence  by  pity  for  that 
general  human  infirmity,  which  you  also,  the  writer, 
share.  Sometimes  you  are  checked  by  the  consideration 
that  perhaps  your  knowledge  of  the  case  was  originally 
gamed  under  opportunities  allowed  by  confidence  or  by 
unsuspecting  carelessness.  Sometimes  the  disclosure 
would  cause  quarrels  between  parties  now  at  peace. 
Sometimes  it  would  carry  pain,  such  as  you  could  not 
feel  justified  in  carrying,  into  the  mind  of  him  who  was 
its  object.  Sometimes,  again,  if  right  to  be  told,  it  might 
be  difficult  to  prove.  Thus,  for  one  cause  or  another, 
some  things  are  sacred,  and  some  things  are  perilous, 
amongst  any  personal  revelations  that  else  you  might 
have  it  in  your  power  to  make.  And  seldom,  indeed,  is 
your  own  silent  retrospect  of  such  connections  altogether 
happy.  "  Put  not  your  trust  in  princes,  nor  in  the  sons 
of  princes,"  —  this  has  been  the  warning, —  this  has 
been  the  farewell  moral,  winding  up  and  pointing  the 
•experience  of  dying  statesmen.  Not  less  tru^y  it  might 
be  said,  "  Put  not  your  trust  in  the  intellectual  princes 
of  your  age :  "  form  no  connections  too  close  with  any 
who  live  only  in  the  atmosphere  of  admiration  and  praise 
The  love  or  the  friendship  of  such  people  rarely  con 
tracts  itself  into  the  narrow  circle  of  individuals.  You 
If  you  are  brilliant  like  themselves,  they  will  hate ;  you 
if  you  are  dull,  *^ '         '11  despise.     Gaze,  therefore,  om 


ON  wordswokth's  poetry.  497 

the  splendor  of  such  idols  as  a  passing  stranger.  Look 
for  a  moment  as  one  sharing  in  the  idolatry ;  but  pass 
on  before  the  splendor  has  been  sullied  by  human  frailty, 
or  before  your  own  generous  homage  has  been  con- 
founded with  offerings  of  weeds. 

Safer,  then,  it  is  to  scrutinize  the  works  of  eminent 
poets,  than  long  to  connect  yourself  with  themselves,  or 
:o  revive  your  remembrances  of  them  in  any  personal 
record.  Now,  amongst  all  works  that  have  illustrated 
our  own  age,  none  can  more  deserve  an  earnest  notice 
than  those  of  the  Laureate^;  and  on  some  grounds,  pecu- 
liar to  themselves,  none  so  much.  Their  merit  in  fact 
is  not  only  supreme  but  unique ;  not  only  supreme  in 
their  general  class,  but  unique  as  in  a  class  of  their  own. 
And  there  is  a  challenge  of  a  separate  nature  to  the 
curiosity  of  the  readers,  in  the  remarkable  contrast 
between  the  first  stage  of  Wordsworth 's  acceptation  with 
the  public  and  that  which  he  enjoys  at  present.  One 
original  obstacle  to  the  favorable  impression  of  the 
/  Wordsworthian  poetry,  and  an  obstacle  purely  self- 
)  created,  was  his  theory  of  poetic  diction.  The  diction 
itself,  without  the  theory,  was  of  less  consequence ;  for 
the  mass  of  readers  would  have  been  too  blind  or  too 
careless  to  notice  it.  But  the  preface  to  the  second 
edition  of  his  Poems  (2  vols.  1799-1800),  compelled 
'hem  to  notice  it.  Nothing  more  injudicious  was  ever 
■Jone  by  man.  An  unpopular  truth  would,  at  any  rate, 
lave  been  a  bad  inauguration,  for  what,  on  oMer  accounts 
[he  author  had  announced  as  "  an  experiment."  His 
poetry  was  already  an  experiment  as  regarded  the  quality 
of  the  subjects  selected,  and  as  regarded  the  mode  of 
treating  them.  That  was  surely  trial  enough  for  the 
32 


498  ON    WORDSWORTH'S    POETRY. 

reader's  untrained  sensibilities,  without  the  unpopular 
truth  besides,  as  to  the  diction.  But,  in  the  mean  time, 
this  truth,  besides  being  unpopular,  was  also,  in  part, 
false  :  it  was  true,  and  it  was  not  true.  And  it  was  not 
true  in  a  double  way.  Stating  broadly,  and  allowing  it 
to  be  taken  for  his  meaning,  that  the  diction  of  ordinary 
life,  in  his  own  words,  "  the  very  language  of  man,"  was 
the  proper  diction  for  poetry,  the  writer  meant  no  such 
thing ;  for  only  a  part  of  this  diction,  according  to  his 
own  subsequent  restriction,  was  available  for  such  a  use. 
And,  secondly,  as  his  own  subsequent  practice  showed, 
even  this  part  was  available  only  for  peculiar  classes  of 
poetry.  In  his  own  exquisite  "  Laodamia,"  in  his  "  Son- 
nets," in  his  "Excursion,"  few  are  his  obligations  to  the 
idiomatic  language  of  life,  as  distinguished  from  that  of 
books,  or  of  prescriptive  usage.  Coleridge  remarked, 
justly,  that  "  The  Excursion  "  bristles  beyond  most  poems 
with  what  are  called  "  dictionary  "  words  ;  that  is,  poly- 
syllabic words  of  Latin  or  Greek  origin.  And  so  it 
must  ever  be,  in  meditative  poetry  upon  solemn  philo- 
sophic themes.  The  gamut  of  ideas  needs  a  correspond- 
ing gamut  of  expressions ;  the  scale  of  the  thinking, 
which  ranges  through  every  key,  exacts,  for  the  artist, 
an  unlimited  command  over  the  entire  scale  of  the 
mstrument  which  he  employs.  Never,  in  fact,  was  there 
a  more  erroneous  direction  than  that  given  by  a  modern 
rector^'*  of  the  Glasgow  University  to  the  students,  —  viz., 
that  they  should  cultivate  the  Saxon  part  of  our  language, 
\t  the  cost  of  the  Latin  part.  Nonsense  !  Both  are 
mdispensable  ;  and,  speaking  generally  without  stopping 
to  distinguish  as  to  subjects,  both  are  equally  indispens 
able.     Pathos,  in  situations  which  are  homely,  or  at  al. 


ON  Wordsworth's  poetry.  499 

connected  with  domestic  affections,  naturally  moves  by 
Saxon  words.  Lyrical  emotion  of  every  kind,  which 
(to  merit  the  name  of  lyrical),  must  be  in  the  state  of 
flux  and  reflux,  or,  generally,  of  agitation,  also  requires 
the  Saxon  element  of  our  language.  And  why  ?  Be- 
cause the  Saxon  is  the  aboriginal  element ;  the  basis, 
and  not  the  superstructure  :  consequently  it  comprehends 
all  the  ideas  which  are  natural  to  the  heart  of  man  and 
to  the  elementary  situations  of  life.  And,  although  the 
Latin  often  furnishes  us  with  duplicates  of  these  ideas, 
yet  the  Saxon  or  monosyllabic  part  has  the  advantage 
of  precedency  in  our  use  and  knowledge  ;  for  it  is  the 
language  of  the  nursery,  whether  for  rich  or  poor,  in 
which  great  philological  academy  no  toleration  is  given 
,to  words  in  ^^osity"  or  ^^  ation."  There  is,  therefore,  a 
^great  advantage,  as  regards  the  consecration  to  our  feel- 
ings, settled,  by  usage  and  custom,  upon  the  Saxon 
strands,  in  the  mixed  yam  of  our  native  tongue.  And, 
universally,  this  may  be  remarked  —  that,  wherever  the 
passion  of  a  poem  is  of  that  sort  which  iises,  presumes, 
or  postulates  the  ideas,  without  seeking  to  extend  them, 
Saxon  will  be  the  "  cocoon"  (to  speak  by  the  language 
applied  to  silk-worms)  which  the  poem  spins  for  itself 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  where  the  motion  of  the  feeling 
is  by  and  through  the  ideas,  where  (as  in  rehgious  or 
meditative  poetry  —  Young's  for  instance,  or  Cowper's)  the 
pathos  creeps  and  kmdles  underneath  the  very  tissues  of 
the  thinking,  there  the  Latin  will  predominate ;  and  so 
much  so  that,  whilst  the  flesh,  the  blood  and  the  muscle, 
will  be  often  almost  exclusively  Latin,  the  articulations 
only,  or  hinges  of  connection,  will  be  anglo-Saxon. 
But  a  blunder,  more  perhaps  from  thoughtlessness  and 


600  ON    WORDSWORTH'S    POETRr. 

careless  reading,  than  from  malice  on  the  part  of  the 
professional  critics,  ought  to  have  roused  Wordsworth 
into  a  firmer  feeling  of  the  entire  question.  These 
critics  have  fancied  that,  in  Wordsworth's  estimate, 
whatsoever  was  plebeian  was  also  poetically  just  in  dic- 
tion ;  not  as  though  the  impassioned  phrase  were  some- 
times the  vernacular  phrase,  but  as  though  the  vernacular 
phrase  were  universally  the  impassioned.  They  naturally 
went  on  to  suggest,  as  a  corollary,  which  Wordsworth 
could  not  refuse,  that  Dryden  and  Pope  must  be  trans- 
lated into  the  flash  diction  of  prisons  and  the  slang  of 
streets,  before  they  could  be  regarded  as  poetically  cos- 
tumed. Now,  so  far  as  these  critics  were  concerned, 
the  answer  would  have  been  —  simply  to  say,  that  much 
in  the  poets  mentioned,  but  especially  of  the  racy.  Dry- 
den, actually  is  in  that  vernacular  .diction  fo;r  which 
Wordsworth  contended;  and,  for  the  other  part,  which 
is  not,  frequently  it  does  require  the  very  purgation,  (if 
that  were  possible),  which  the  critics  were  presuming  to 
be  so  absurd.  In  Pope,  and  sometimes  in  Dryden,  there 
is  much  of  the  unfeeling  and  the  prescriptive  slang  which 
Wordsworth  denounced.  During  the  eighty  years  be- 
tv/een  1660  and  1740,  grew  up  that  scrofulous  taint  in 
our  diction  which  w^as  denounced  by  Wordsworth  as 
technically  "  poetic  language  ;  "  and,  if  Dryden  and  Pope 
were  less  infected  than  others,  this  was  merely  because 
their  understandings  were  finer.  Much  there  is  in  both 
poets,  as  regards  diction,  which  does  require  correction. 
And  if,  so  far,  the  critics  should  resist  Wordsworth's 
principle  of  reform,  not  he,  but  they,  would  have  been 
found  the  patrons  of  deformity.  This  course  would 
soon  have  turned  the  tables  upon  the  critics.     Fo    the 


ON  tvokdsworth's  poetry.  501 

poets,  or  the  class  of  poets,  whom  they  unwisely  selected 
as  models,  susceptible  of  no  correction,  happen  to  be 
those  who  chiefly  require  it.  But  their  foolish  selection 
ought  not  to  have  intercepted  or  clouded  the  question 
when  put  in  another  shape,  since  in  this  shape  it  opens 
into  a  very  troublesome  dilemma.  Spenser,  Shakspeare, 
the  Bible  of  1610,  and  Milton,  —  how  say  you,  William 
Wordsworth,  —  are  these  right  and  true  as  to  diction,  or 
are  they  not  ?  If  you  say  they  are,  then  what  is  it  that 
you  are  proposing  to  change  ?  What  room  for  a  revolu- 
tion ?  Would  you,  as  Sancho  says,  have  "  better  bread 
than  is  made  of  wheat  ?  "  But  if  you  say,  no,  they  are 
not ;  then,  indeed,  you  open  a  fearful  range  to  your  own 
artillery,  but  in  a  war  greater  than  you  could,  appa- 
rently, have  contemplated.  In  the  first  case,  that  is,  if 
the  leading  classics  of  the  English  literature  are,  in 
quality  of  diction  and  style,  loyal  to  the  canons  of  sound 
taste,  then  you  cut  away  the  lociis  standi  for  yourself  as 
a  reformer :  the  reformation  applies  only  to  secondary 
and  recent  abuses.  In  the  second,  if  they  also  are 
faulty,  you  undertake  an  onus  of  hostility  so  vast  that 
you  will  be  found  fighting  against  the  stars. 

It   is    clear,    therefore,    that   Wordsworth  erred,   and 

caused  unnecessary  embarrassment,  equally  to  the  attack 

and  to  the  defence,  by  not  assigning  the  names  of  the 

parties  ofTended,  whom  he  had  specially  contemplated. 

/The  bodies  of  the  criminals  should  have  been  had  into 

■;  court.     But  much  more  he  erred  in  another  point,  where    , 

"^his  neglect  cannot  be  thought  of  without  astonishment. 

The  whole  appeal  turned  upon  a  comparison   between 

»wo  modes  of  phraseology;  each  of  the^ie,  the   bad  and 

the  good,  should  have  been  extensively  illustrated ;  and-.—^- 


502  ON  wordswokth's  poetry. 

until  that  IS  done,  tlie  whole  dispute  is  an  aerial  subtilty 
equally  beyond  the  grasp  of  the  best  critic  and  the  worst. 
How  could,  a  man  so  much  in  earnest,  and  so  deeply 
interested  in  the  question,  commit  so  capital  an  over- 
sight ?  Tantamne  rem  tarn  negligenter  ?  The  truth  is, 
that,  at  this  day,  after  a  lapse  of  forty-seven  years,  and 
some  discussion,  the  whole  question  moved  by  Words- 
worth is  still  a  res  Integra.  And  for  this  reason,  that 
no  sufficient  specimen  has  ever  been  given  of  the  par- 
ticular phraseology  which  each  party  contemplates  as 
good  or  as  bad  :  no  man,  in  this  dispute,  steadily  under- 
stands even  himself;  and,  if  he  did,  no  other  person 
understands  him  for  want  of  distinct  illustrations.  Not 
only  the  answer,  therefore,  is  still  entirely  in  arrear,  but 
oven  the  question  has  not  yet  practically  explained 
itself  so  as  that  an  answer  to  it  could  be  possible. 

Passing  from  the  diction  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  to  its 
matter,  the  least  plausible  objection  ever  brought  against 
it  was  that  of  Mr.  Hazlitt :  "  One  would  suppose,"  he 
said,  "  from  the  tenor  of  his  subjects,  that  on  this  earth 
there  was  neither  marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage." 
But  as  well  might  it  be  said  of  Aristophanes :  "  One 
would  suppose,  that  in  Athens  no  such  thing  had  been 
known  as  sorrow  and  weeping."  Or  Wordsworth  him- 
self might  say  reproachfully  to  some  of  Mr.  Hazlitt's 
more  favored  poets ;  "  Judging  by  ycnir  themes,  a  man 
must  believe  that  there  is  no  such  thing  on  our  planet 
as  fighting  and  kicking."  Wordsworth  has  written  many 
memorable  poems  (for  mstance,  "  On  the  Tyrolean  and 
the  Spanish  Insurrections  ;  "  "  On  the  Retreat  from  Mo3 
;*.ow;"  "On  the  Feast,  of  Brougham  Castle"),  all  sym 
D^thizing   powerfully    with    the    martial    spirit.     Othet 


ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

poets,  favorites   of  Mr.   Hazlitt,   have   never  struck  a 
solitary  note  from  this  Tyrtaean  lyre  ;  and  who  blames 
them?    Surely,  if  every  man  finds  his  powers  hmited, 
every  man  would  do  well  to  respect  this  silent  admom- 
tion  of  nature,  by  not  travelling  out  of  his  appomted 
walk,   through    any   coxcombry  of  sporting  a   spurious 
versatility.    And  in  this  view,  what  Mr.  Hazlitt  made  the 
reproach  of  the  poet,  is  amongst  the  first  of  his  praises. 
But  there  is  another  reason  why  Wordsworth  could  not 
meddle  with  festal  raptures  like  the  glory  of  a  wedding- 
day      These  raptures  are  not  only  too  brief,  but  (which      \ 
is  worse)  they  tend    downwards  :  even  for  as  long   as 
they  last,  they  do  not  move   upon  an  ascending  scale. 
And  even  that  is  not  their  worst  fault:  they  do  not  dif- 
fu.e   or  communicate  themselves  :  the  wretches  chiefly 
interested  in  a  marriage  are  so  selfish,  that  they  keep  all 
the  rapture  to    themselves.     Mere   joy,   that  does   not 
lincrer  and  reproduce  itself  in  reverbemtions  or  mirrors 
is  not  fitted  for  poetry.     What  would  the  sun  be  itself, 
if  it  were  a  mere  blank  orb  of  fire  that  did  not  multiply 
its   splendors   through    millions   of   rays   refracted  and 
reflected;  or  if  its   glory  were   not   endlessly  caught, 
splintered,  and   thrown   back  by  atmospheric  repercus- 

sions?  , 

There  is,  besides,  a  still  subtler  reason  (and  one  that 
,  ught  not  to  have  escaped  the  acuteness  of  Mr.  Hazlitt), 
why  the  muse  of  Wordsworth  could  not  glorify  a  wed- 
ling  festival.  Poems  no  longer  than  a  sonnet  he  might 
derive  from  such  an  impulse  :  and  one  such  poem  of  his 
there  really  is.  But  whosoever  looks  searchingly  into 
the  characteristic  genius  of  Wordsworth,  will  see  that  he 
does  not  willingly  deal  with  a  passion  in  its  direct  aspect. 


504  ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

or  presenting  an  unmodified  contour,  but  in  forms  more 
complex  and  oblique,  and  when  passing  under  the  shadow 
of  some  secondary  passion.  Joy,  for  instance,  that  wells 
up  from  constitutional  sources,  joy  that  is  ebullient  from 
youth  to  age,  and  cannot  cease  to  sparkle,  he  yet  exhib- 
its in  the  person  of  Matthew,^  the  village  schoolmaster, 
as  touched  and  overgloomed  by  memories  of  sorrow.  In 
the  poem  of  "  V/e  are  Seven,"  which  brings  into  day  for 
the  first  time  a  profound  fact  in  the  abysses  of  human 
nature,  namely,  that  the  mind  of  an  infant  cannot  admit 
the  idea  of  death,  anymore  than  the  fountain  of  light  can 
comprehend  the  aboriginal  darkness  (a  truth  on  which 
Mr.  Ferrier  has  since  commented  beautifully  in  his 
"  Philosophy  of  Consciousness  ") ;  the  little  mountaineer, 
who  furnishes  the  text  for  this  lovely  strain,  she  whose 
fulness  of  life  could  not  brook  the  gloomy  faith  in  a 
grave,  is  yet  (for  the  effect  upon  the  reader)  brought  into 
connection  with  the  reflex  shadows  of  the  grave :  and 
if  she  herself  has  not,  the  reader  has,  the  gloom  of  that 
contemplation  obliquely  irradiated,  as  raised  in  relief 
upon  his  imagination,  even  by  her.  Death  and  its 
sunny  antipole  are  forced  into  connection.  I  remember 
igain  to  have  heard  a  man  complain,  that  in  a  little 
poem  having  for  its  very  subject  the  universal  diffusion 
tind  the  gratuitous  diffusion  of  joy  — 

"Pleasure  is  spread  through  the  earth, 
In  stray  gifts  to  be  claimed  by  whoever  shall  find," 

1  picture  occurs  which  overpowered  him  with  melan- 
t.'holy  :  it  was  this  — 

1  See  the  exquisite  poems,  so  little  understood  by  the  common- 
place reader,  of  The  Two  April  Mornings,  and  The  Fountain, 


ON  Wordsworth's  poetry.  505 

"  In  sight  of  the  spires 
All  alive  with  the  fires 
Of  the  sun  going  down  to  his  rest. 
In  the  broad  open  eye  of  the  solitary  sky. 
They  dance, —  there  are  three,  as  jocund  as  free, — 
While  they  dance  on  the  calm  river's  breast."! 

Undeniably  there  is  (and  without  ground  for  complaint 
there  is)  even  here,  where  the  spirit  of  gayety  is  pro- 
fessedly invoked,  an  oblique  though  evanescent  image 
flashed  upon  us  of  a  sadness  that  lies  deep  behind  the 
laughing  figures,  and  of  a  solitude  that  is  the  real  pos- 
sessor in  fee  of  all  things,  but  is  waiting  an  hour  or  so 
for  the  dispossession  of  the  false  dancing  tenants. 

An  inverse  case,  as  regards  the  three  just  cited,  is 
found  in  the  poem  of  '  Hart-leap-well,'  over  which  the 
mysterious  spirit  of  the  noon-day,  Pan,  seems  to  brood. 
Out  of  suffering  is  there  evoked  the  image  of  peace. 
Out  of  the  cruel  leap,  and  the  agonizing  race  through 
thirteen  hours ;  out  of  the  anguish  in  the  perishing 
brute,  and  the  headlong  courage  of  his  final  despair, 

"  Not  unobserved  by  sympathy  divine,"  — 

out  of  the   ruined   lodge   and   the   forgotten  mansion, 


1  Coleridge  had  a  grievous  infirmity  of  mind  as  regarded  pain. 
He  could  not  contemplate  the  shadows  of  fear,  of  sorrow,  of  suffer- 
ing, with  any  steadiness  of  gaze.  He  was,  in  relation  to  that  sub- 
ject, what  in  Lancashire  they  call  nesh,  i.  e.,  soft,  or  effeminate 
This  frailty  claimed  indulgence,  had  he  not  erected  it  at  times  into 
a  ground  of  superiority.  Accoi-dingly,  I  remember  that  he  also 
iomplained  of  this  passage  in  Wordswoi'th,  and  on  the  same 
ground,  as  being  too  overpoweringly  depressing  in  the  fourth  line, 
when  modified  by  +he  other  five. 


506  ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

bowers  that  are  trodden  under  foot,  and  pleasure-houscb 
that  are  dust,  the  poet  calls  up  a  vision  of  palingenesis  ; 
he  interposes  his  solemn  images  of  suffering,  of  decay, 
and  ruin,  only  as  a  visionary  haze  through  which  gleams 
transpire  of  a  trembling  dawn  far  off,  but  surely  on  the 
road. 

"  The  pleasure-house  is  dust :  behind,  before, 

This  is  no  common  waste,  no  common  gloom  ; 
But  Nature  in  due  course  of  time  once  more 
Shall  here  put  on  her  beauty  and  her  bloom. 

She  leaves  these  objects  to  a  slow  decay, 

That  what  we  are,  and  have  been,  may  be  known 
.  But,  at  the  coming  of  the  milder  day. 

These  monuments  shall  all  be  overgrown." 

This  influx  of  the  joyous  into  the  sad,  and  the  sad  into 
the  joyous,  this  reciprocal  entanglement  of  darkness  in 
light,  and  of  light  in  darkness,  offers  a  subject  too  occult 
for  popular  criticism  ;  but  merely  to  have  suggested  it, 
may  be  sufficient  to  account  for  Wordsworth  not  having 
chosen  a  theme  of  pure  garish  sunshine,  such  as  the 
hurry  of  a  wedding-day,  so  long  as  others,  more  pictu- 
resque or  more  plastic,  were  to  be  had.  A  wedding-day 
is,  in  many  a  life,  the  sunniest  of  its  days.  But  unless 
it  is  overcast  with  some  event  more  tragic  than  could  be 
wished,  its  uniformity  of  blaze,  without  shade  or  relief, 
I  lakes  it  insipid  to  the  mere  bystander.  Accordingly, 
\A  epithalamia  seem  to  have  been  written  under  the 
inspiration  of  a  bank-note. 

Far  beyond  these  causes  of  repulsiveness  to  ordinnry 
readers  was  the  class  of  subjects  selected,  and  the  mode 
of  treating  them.     The  earliest  line  of  readers,  the  var 


ON  Wordsworth's  poetry.  507 

:n  point  of  time,  always  includes  a  majority  of  the 
young-,  the  commonplace,  and  the  unimpassioned.  Sub- 
sequently, these  are  sifted  and  winnowed,  as  the  rear 
ranks  come  forward  in  succession.  But  at  first  it  was 
sure  to  ruin  any  poems,  that  the  situations  treated  are 
not  those  which  reproduce  to  the  fancy  of  readers  tteir 
own  hopes  and  prospects.  The  meditative  are  interested 
by  all  that  has  an  interest  for  human  nature.  But  what 
cares  a  young  lady,  dreaming  of  lovers  kneelmg  at  her 
feet,  for  the  agitations  of  a  mother  forced  into  resigning 
her  child  ?  or  of  a  shepherd  at  eighty  parting  forever 
amongst  mountain  solitudes  with  an  only  son  of  seven- 
teen, innocent  and  hopeful,  whom  soon  afterwards  the 
guilty  town  seduces  into  ruin  irreparable  ?  Romances 
and  novels  in  verse  constitute  the  poetry  which  is 
immediately  successful ;  and  that  is  a  poetry,  it  may  be 
added,  which,  after  one  generation,  is  unsuccessful  for- 
ever. 

But  this  theme  is  too  extensive.  Let  us  pass  to  the 
separate  works  of  Wordsworth ;  and,  in  deference  to 
the  opinion  of  the  world,  let  us  begin  with  "  The  Excur- 
sion." This  poem,  as  regards  its  opening,  seems  to 
require  a  recast.  The  inaugurating  story  of  Margaret 
is  in  a  wrong  key,  and  rests  upon  a  false  basis.  It  is  a 
case  of  sorrow  from  desertion.  So  at  least  it  is  repre- 
sented. Margaret  loses,  in  losing  her  husband,  the  one 
sole  friend  of  her  heart.  And  the  wanderer,  who  is  the 
oresiding  philosopher  of  the  poem,  in  retracing  her  story, 
bees  nothing  in  the  case  but  a  wasting  away  through 
sorrow,  at  once  natural  in  its  kind,  and  preternatural  in 
its  degree. 

There  is  a  story  somewhere  told  of  a  man  who  com- 


^03  ON    WORDSWORTH'S    POETRY. 

plained,  and  his  friends  complained,  that  his  face  jooked 
almost  always  dirty.  The  man  explained  this  strange 
affection  out  of  a  mysterious  idiosyncrasy  in  the  face 
Itself,  upon  which  the  atmosphere  so  acted  as  to  force 
out  stains  or  masses  of  gloomy  suffusion,  just  as  it  does 
upon  some  qualities  of  stone  in  vapory  weather.  But, 
said  liis  friend,  had  you  no  advice  for  this  strange  affec- 
tion ?  O  yes  :  surgeons  had  prescribed  ;  chemistry  had 
exhausted  its  secrets  upon  the  case ;  magnetism  had 
done  its  best ;  electricity  had  done  its  worst.  His  friend 
mused  for  some  time,  and  then  asked  :  "  Pray,  amongst 
these  painful  experiments,  did  it  ever  happen  to  you  to 
try  one  that  I  have  read  of,  namely,  a  basin  of  soap  and 
water  ?  "  And  perhaps,  on  the  same  principle,  it  might 
be  allowable  to  ask  the  philosophic  wanderer,  who 
washes  the  case  of  Margaret  with  so  many  coats  of 
metaphysical  varnish,  but  ends  with  finding  all  unavail- 
ing, "  Pray,  amongst  your  other  experiments,  did  you 
ever  try  the  effect  of  a  guinea  ? "  Supposing  this, 
however,  to  be  a  remedy  beyond  his  fortitude,  at  least 
he  might  have  offered  a  little  rational  advice,  which  costs 
no  more  than  civility.  Let  us  look  steadily  at  the  case. 
The  particular  calamity  under  which  Margaret  groaned 
was  the  lossof  her  husband,  who  had  enlisted.  There 
is  something,  even  on  the  husband's  part,  in  this  enlist 
ment,  to  which  the  reader  can  hardly  extend  his  com 
passion.  The  man  had  not  gone  off,  it  is  true,  as  a 
heartless  deserter  of  his  family,  or  in  profligate  quest  of 
pleasure  :  cheerfully  he  would  have  stayed  and  worked, 
had  trade  been  good  ;  but,  as  it  was  not,  he  found  it 
impossible  to  support  the  spectacle  of  domestic  suffering 
he  takes  the  bounty  of  a  recruiting  sergeant,  and  off  he 


ON    WORDbWORTH's    POETRY.  509 

marches  with  his  regiment.  Nobody  reaches  the  sum- 
mit of  heartlessness  at  once ;  and,  accordingly,  ui  this 
early  stage  of  his  desertion,  we  are  not  surprised  to  hnd 
that  part  (but  what  part  ?)  of  the  bounty  had  been 
silently  conveyed  to  his  wife.  So  far  we  are  barely  not 
mdignant ;  but  as  time  wears  on  we  become  highly  so; 
for  no  letter  does  he  ever  send  to  his  poor,  forsaken  part- 
ner, either  of  tender  excuse,  or  of  encouraging  prospects. 
Yet,  if  he  had  done  this,  still  we  must  condemn  him. 
Millions  have  supported  (and  supported  without  praise 
or  knowledge  of  man)  that  trial  from  which  he  so 
weakly  fled.  Even  in  this,  and  going  no  further,  he 
was  a  voluptuary.  Millions  have  heard  and  acknowl- 
edged, as  a  secret  call  from  Heaven,  the  summons,  not 
only  to  take  their  own  share  of  household  suffering,  as  a 
mere  sacrifice  to  the  spirit  of  manliness,  but  also  to 
stand  the  far  sterner  trial  of  witnessing  the  same  priva- 
tions in  a  wife  and  little  children.  To  evade  this,  to 
slip  his  neck  out  of  the  yoke,  when  God  summons  a  poor 
man  to  such  a  trial,  is  the  worst  form  of  cowardice. 
And  Margaret's  husband,  by  adding  to  this  cowardice 
subsequently  an  entire  neglect  of  his  family,  not  so  much 
as  intimating  the  destination  of  the  regiment,  forfeits  his 
last  hold  upon  our  lingering  sympathy.  But  with  him, 
t  will  be  said,  the  poet  has  not  connected  the  leading 
thread  of  the  interest.  Certainly  not ;  though  in  some 
degree  by  a  reaction  from  his  character  depends  the  re- 
spectability of  Margaret's  grief.  And  it  is  impossible  to 
turn  away  from  his  case  entirely,  because  from  the  act 
of  the  enlistment  is  derived  the  whole  movement  of 
the  story.  Here  it  is  that  we  must  lax  the  wandering 
©hilosopher   with   treason.     He   found   ro   luxurious   a 


510  ON    WORDSWORTH  S    POETRY. 

pleasure  in  contemplating  a  pathetic  phthisis  of  heart  in 
the  abandoned  wife,  that  the  one  obvious  counsel  in  her 
particular  distress  which  dotage  could  not  have  over- 
looked he  suppresses.  And  yet  this  in  the  revolution 
of  a  week  would  have  brought  her  effectual  relief. 
Sur;dy  the  regiment,  into  which  her  husband  had  enlisted, 
bore  some  number :  it  was  the  king's  "  dirty  half-hun- 
dred"^^—  or  the  rifle  brigade  —  or  some  corps  known  to 
men  and  the  Horse  Guards.  Instead,  therefore,  of 
suffering  poor  Margaret  to  loiter  at  a  gate,  looking  for 
answers  to  her  questions  from  vagrant  horsemen, —  a 
process  which  reminds  one  of  a  sight,  sometimes  extort- 
ing at  once  smiles  and  deep  pity,  in  the  crowded 
thoroughfares  of  London,  namely,  a  little  child  inno- 
cently asking  with  tearful  eyes  from  strangers  for  the 
mother  whom  it  has  lost  in  that  vast  wilderness, —  the 
wanderer  should  at  once  have  inquired  for  the  station 
of  that  detachment  which  had  enlisted  him.  This  must 
have  been  in  the  neighborhood.  Here  he  would  have 
obtained  all  the  particulars.  That  same  night  he  would 
have  written  to  the  War-Office ;  and  in  a  very  few  days 
an  official  answer,  bearing  the  indorsement,  On  H.  M.' 
Service,  would  have  placed  Margaret  in  communication 
with  the  truant.  To  have  overlooked  a  point  of  policy 
so  broadly  apparent  as  this,  vitiates  and  nullities  the 
very  basis  of  the  story.  Even  for  a  romance  it  will  noi 
do  ;  far  less  for  a  philosophic  poem  dealing  with  intense 
realities.  No  such  case  of  distress  could  have  lived  for 
one  fortnight,  nor  have  survived  a  single  interview  with 
the  rector,  the  curate,  the  parish-clerk,  with  the  school- 
master, the  doctor,  the  attorney,  the  innkeeper,  or  th« 
exciseman. 


ON  Wordsworth's  poetry.  511 

But,  apart  from  the  vicious  mechanism  of  the  inci- 
dents, the  story  is  even  more  objectionable  by  the  doubt- 
ful quality  of  the  leading  character  from  which  it  derives 
its  pathos.  Had  any  one  of  us  readers  held  the  office 
of  coroner  in  her  neighborhood,  he  would  have  found  it 
his  duty  to  hold  an  inquest  upon  the  body  of  her  infant. 
This  child,  as  every  reader  could  depose  [now  when  the 
details  have  been  published  by  the  poet),  died  of  neglect; 
not  through  direct  cruelty,  but  through  criminal  self- 
indulgence.  Self-indulgence  in  what  ?  Not  in  liquor, 
yet  not  altogether  in  fretting.  Sloth,  and  the  habit  of 
gadding  abroad,  were  most  in  fault.  The  Wanderer^ 
himself  might  have  been  called  as  a  witness  for  the 
crown,  to  prove  that  the  infant  was  left  to  sleep  in  soli- 
tude for  hours  :  the  key  even  was  taken  away,  as  if  to 
intercept  the  possibility  (except  through  burglary)  of 
those  tender  attentions  from  some  casual  stranger,  which 
the  unfeeling  mother  had  withdrawn.  The  child  abso- 
lutely awoke  whilst  the  philosopher  was  listening  at  the 
door.  It  cried  ;  but  finally  hushed  itself  to  sleep,  That 
looks  like  a  case  of  Dalby's  carminative.^^  But  this  crisis 
could  not  have  been  relied  on :  tragical  catastrophes 
arise  from  neglected  crying ;  ruptures  in  the  first  place, 
a  very  common  result  in  infants  ;  rolling  out  of  bed  fol- 
lowed by  dislocation  of  the  neck  ;  fits,  and  other  short 
cuts  to  death.  It  is  hardly  any  praise  to  Margaret  that 
she  carried  the  child  to  that  consummation  by  a  more 
ingering  road. 

This  first  tale,  therefore,  must  and  will,  if  Mr. 
Wordsworth  retains  ene'-gy  for  such  recasts  of  a  labo- 
rious work,  b:  cut  away  from  its  connection  with  "  The 
Excursion."     This  is  the  more  to  be  expected  from  a 


512  ON  WORDS  worth's  poetry. 

poet  aware  of  his  own  importance  and  anxious  for  the 
perfection  of  his  works,  because  nothing  in  the  following 
books  depends  upon  this  narrative.  No  timbers  or  main 
beams  need  to  be  sawed  away  ;  it  is  but  a  bolt  that  is  to  be 
slipped,  a  rivet  to  be  unscrewed.  And  yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  the  connection  is  slight,  the  injury  is  great ;  for 
ve  all  complain  heavily  of  entering  a  temple  dedicsted 
to  new  combinations  of  truth  through  a  vestibule  of 
falsehood.  And  the  falsehood  is  double ;  falsehood  in 
the  adjustment  of  the  details  (however  separately  possi- 
ble), falsehood  in  the  character  which,  wearing  the  mask 
of  profound  sentiment,  does  apparently  repose  upon  dys- 
pepsy  and  sloth. 

Far  different  in  value  and  in  principle  of  composition 
is  the  next  tale  in  "  The  Excursion."  This  occupies  the 
fourth  book,  and  is  the  impassioned  record  from  the 
infidel  solitary  of  those  heart-shaking  chapters  in  his 
own  life  which  had  made  him  what  the  reader  finds  him. 
Once  he  had  not  been  a  solitary ;  once  he  had  not  been 
an  infidel ;  now  he  is  both.  He  lives  in  a  little,  urn-like 
valley  (a  closet-recess  from  Little  Langdale  by  the  de- 
scription), amongst  the  homely  household  of  a  yeoman  : 
he  is  become  a  bitter  cynic ;  and  not  against  man  alone, 
or  society  alone,  but  against  the  laws  of  hope  or  fear, 
upon  which  both  repose.  If  he  endures  the  society 
with  which  he  is  now  connected,  it  is  because,  being 
dull,  that  society  is  of  few  words  ;  it  is  because,  being 
tied  to  hard  labor,  that  society  goes  early  to  bed,  and 
packs  up  its  dulness  at  eight,  p.  M.,  in  blankets ;  it  is 
^ecjiuse,  under  the  acute  inflictions  of  Sunday,  or  the 
thronic  inflictions  of  the  Christmas  holidays,  that  dull 
iociety    is  easily  laid  into  a  magnetic  sleep  by  three 


ON  Wordsworth's  poKTRi.  513 

passes  of  metaphysical  philosophy.  The  narrative  of 
this  misanthrope  is  grand  and  impassioned ;  not  creeping 
by  details  and  minute  touches,  but  rolling  through  capital 
events,  and  uttering  its  pathos  through  great  representa- 
tive abstractions.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than  when,  upon 
the  desolation  of  his  household,  upon  the  utter  emptying 
of  his  domestic  chambers  by  the  successive  deaths  of 
children  and  youthful  wife,  just  at  that  moment  the 
mighty  phantom  of  the  French  Revolution  rises  solemnly 
above  the  horizon ;  even  then  new  earth  and  new 
heavens  are  promised  to  human  nature ;  and  suddenly 
the  solitary  man,  translated  by  the  frenzy  of  human 
grief  into  the  frenzy  of  supernatural  hopes,  adopts  these 
radiant  visions  for  the  darlings  whom  he  has  lost  — 

"  Society  becomes  his  glittering  bride. 
And  airy  hopes  his  children." 

Yet  it  is  a  misfortune  in  the  fate  of  this  fine  tragic 
movement,  rather  than  its  structure,  that  it  tends  to  col- 
lapse :  the  latter  strains,  colored  deeply  by  disappoint- 
ment, do  not  correspond  with  the  grandeur  of  the  first. 
And  the  hero  of  the  record  becomes  even  more  painfully 
a  contrast  to  himself  than  the  tenor  of  the  incidents  to 
their  earlier  tenor.  Sneering  and  querulous  comments 
upon  so  broad  a  field  as  human  folly,  make  poor  com- 
pensation for  the  magnificence  of  youthful  enthusiasm. 
But  may  not  this  defect  be  redressed  in  a  future  section 
of  the  poem  ?  It  is  probable,  from  a  hint  dropped  by 
the  author,  that  one  collateral  object  of  the  philosophical 
discussions  is  —  the  reconversion  of  the  splenetic  infidel 
to  his  ancient  creed  in  some  higher  form,  and  to  his 
ancient  temper  of  benignant  hope  :  in  which  case,  what 
33 


614  ON    WORDS WOETH's    rOETEY. 

now  we  feel  to  be  a  cheerless  depression,  will  sweep 
round  into  a  noble  reascent  —  quite  on  a  level  with  the 
aspirations  of  youth,  and  differing,  not  in  degree,  but 
only  in  quality  of  enthusiasm.  Yet,  if  this  is  the  poet's 
plan,  it  seems  to  rest  upon  a  misconception.  For  how 
should  the  sneering  sceptic,  who  has  actually  found 
solace  in  Voltaire's  "  Candide,"  be  restored  to  the  benig- 
nities of  faith  and  hope  by  argument  ?  It  was  not  in 
this  way  that  he  lost  his  station  amongst  Christian 
believers.  No  false  philosophy  it  had  been  which 
wrecked  his  Christian  spirit  of  hope  ;  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, his  bankruptcy  in  hope  which  wrecked  his  Chris- 
tian philosophy.  Here,  therefore,  the  poet  will  certainly 
find  himself  in  an  "  almighty  fix;  "  because  any  possible 
treatment,  which  could  restore  the  solitary's  former  self, 
such  as  a  course  of  sea-bathing,  could  not  interest  the 
reader  ;  and  reversely,  any  successful  treatment  through 
argument  that  could  interest  the  philosophic  reader 
would  not,  under  the  circumstances,  seem  a  plausible 
restoration  for  the  case. 

What  is  it  that  has  made  the  recluse  a  sceptic  ?  Is  it 
the  reading  of  bad  books  ^  In  that  case  he  may  be  re- 
claimed by  the  arguments  of  those  who  have  read  better. 
But  not  at  all.  He  has  become  the  unbelieving  cynie 
that  he  is,  1st,  through  his  own  domestic  calamities 
predisposing  him  to  gloomy  views  of  human  nature  ; 
and,  2dly,  through  the  overclouding  of  his  high-toned 
expectations  from  the  French  Revolution,  which  has  dis- 
posed him,  in  a  spirit  of  revenge  for  his  own  disappoint- 
ment, to  contemptuous  views  of  human  nature.  Now, 
surely  the  dejection  which  supports  his  gloom,  and  the 
despondency  which  supports  his  contempt,  are  not  of  a 


ON  WORDS Y.  orth's  poetrt.  515 

nature  to  give  way  before  philosophic  reasonings.     Make 
him  happy  by  restoring  what  he  has  lost,  and  his  genial 
philosophy  will  return  of  itself.     Make  him  triumphant 
by  realizing  what  had  seemed  to  him  the  golden  promises 
of  ths  French  Revolution,  and  his  political  creed  will 
moult  her  sickly  feathers.     Do  this,  and  he  is  still  young 
enoucrh  for  hope  ;  but  less  than  this  restoration  of  his 
morning  visions  will  not  call   back  again  his  morning 
happiness  ;    and  breaking   spears   with  him   in    logical 
tournaments  will  mend  neither  his  hopes  nor  his  temper. 
Indirectly,  besides,  it  ought  not  to  be  overlooked,  that, 
as  respects  the  French  Revolution,  the  whole  college  of 
philosophy   in    "The   Excursion,"   who   are    gathered 
together  upon  the  case  of  the  recluse,  make  the  same 
mistake  that  he  makes.    Why  is  the  recluse  disgusted  with 
the  French  Revolution  ?     Because  it  had  not  fulfilled 
many  of  his  expectations;  and,  of  those  which  it  had 
fulfilled,  some   had  soon  been   darkened   by   reverses. 
But   really   this   was    childish    impatience.     If  a  man 
depends  for  the   exuberance    of  his   harvest   upon   the 
splendor  of  the  coming  summer,  you  do  not  excuse  him 
for  taking  prussic  acid  because  it  rains  cats  and  dogs 
throucrh  the  first  ten  days  of  April.     All  in  good  time 
we  say  ;  take  it  easy ;  make  acquaintance  with  May  and 
June  before  you  do  anything  rash.     The  French  Revo- 
lution  has  not,  even  yet  [1845],  come  into  full  actiom 
It   was  the  explosion  of  a  prodigious  volcano,   which 
scattered  its  lava  over  every  kingdom  of  every  contment, 
every%vhere  silently  manuring  them  for  social  struggles; 
this  lava  is  gradually  fertilizing  all;  the  revolutionary 
movement  is  moving  onwards  at  this  hour  as  inexorably 
w  ever.     Listen,  if  you  have  ears  for  such  spiritual 


516  ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

sounds,  to  the  mighty  tide  even  now  slowly  coming  up 
from  the  sea  to  Milan,  to  Rome,  to  Naples,  to  Vienna. 
Hearken  to  the  gentle  undulations  already  breaking 
against  the  steps  of  that  golden  throne  which  stretches 
from  St.  Petersburgh  to  Astrachaii;  —  tremble  at  the 
hurricanes  which  have  long  been  mustering  about  the 
pavilions  of  the  Ottoman  Padishah.  All  these  are  long 
swells  setting  in  from  the  French  Revolution.  Even  as 
legards  France  herself,  that  which  gave  the  mortal 
ofTence  to  the  sympathies  of  the  solitary  was  the  Reign 
of  Terror.  But  how  thoughtless  to  measure  the  cyclea 
of  vast  national  revolutions  by  metres  that  would  not 
stretch  round  an  ordinary  human  passion !  Even  to  a 
frail  sweetheart  you  would  grant  more  indulgence  than 
to  be  off  in  a  pet  because  some  transitory  cloud  arose 
between  you.  The  Reign  of  Terror  was  a  mere  fleeting 
phasis.  The  Napoleon  dynasty  was  nothing  more.  Even 
that  scourge,  which  was  supposed  by  many  to  have  mas- 
tered the  Revolution,  has  itself  passed  away  upon  the  wind, 

—  leaving  no  wreck,  relic,  or  record  behind,  except  pre- 
cisely those  changes  which  it  worked,  not  as  an  enemy  to 
the  Revolution  (which  also  it  was),  hit  as  its  servant  and 
its  tool.  See,  even  whilst  we  speak,  the  folly  of  that 
cynical  sceptic  who  would  not  allow  time  for  great 
natural  processes  of  purification  to  travel  onwards  to 
their  birth,  or  wait  for  the  evolution  of  natural  results 

—  the  storm  that  shocked  him  has  wheeled  away ;  — ■ 
the  frost  and  the  hail  that  offended  him  have  done  their 
office  ;  —  the  rain  is  over  and  gone  ;  —  happier  days 
have  descended  upon  France  ;  —  the  voice  of  the  turtle 
3  heard  in  all  her  forests  ;  —  man  walks  with  his  head 
?rect :  —  bastiles    are    no    more  ;  —  every    cottage    is 


OS  Wordsworth's  poEXRy.  517 

searched  by  the  golden  light  of  law  ;  and  the  privilegee 
of  conscience  are  consecrated  forever. 

Here,  then,  the  poet  himself,  the  philosophic  wanderei, 
the  learned  vicar,  are  all  equally  in  fault  with  the  solitary- 
sceptic  ;  for  they  all  agree  in  treating  his  disappointment 
as  sound  and  reasonable  in  itself;  but  blamable  only  in 
relation  to  those  exalted  hopes  which  he  never  ought  to 
have  encouraged.  Right  (they  say),  to  consider  the 
French  Revolution,  now,  as  a  failure  ;  but  not  right 
originally,  to  have  expected  that  it  should  succeed. 
Whereas,  in  fact,  it  has  succeeded  ;  it  is  propagating  its 
life  ;  it  is  travelling  on  to  new  births  —  conquering,  and 
yet  to  conquer. 

It  is  not  easy  to  see,  therefore,  how  the  Laureate  can 
avoid  making  some  change  in  the  constitution  of  his 
poem,  were  it  only  to  rescue  his  philosophers,  and, 
therefore,  his  own  philosophy,  from  the  imputation  of 
precipitancy  in  judgment.  They  charge  the  sceptic  with 
rash  judgment  a  parte  ante  ;  and,  meantime,  they  them- 
selves are  more  liable  to  that  charge  d  parte  post.  If  he, 
at  the  first,  hoped  too  much  (which  is  not  clear,  but  only 
that  he  hoped  too  impatiently),  they  afterwards  recant 
too  blindly.  And  this  error  they  will  not,  themselves, 
fail  to  acknowledge,  as  soon  as  they  awaken  to  the  truth, 
that  the  Revolution  did  not  close  on  the  18th  Brumaire, 
1799,  at  which  time  it  was  only  arrested  or  suspended, 
in  one  direction,  by  military  shackles,  but  is  siill  mining 
\inder  ground,  like  the  ghost  in  Hamiet,  through  every 
quarter  of  the  globe.  ^ 

1  The  reader  must  not  understand  the  writer  as  unconditionally 
»pproTing  of  the  French  Revolution.     It  is  his  belief  that  the 


518  ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

In  paying  so  much  attention  to  "  The  "Excursion ' 
(of  which,  in  a  more  extended  notice,  the  two  books 
entitled,  "  The  Churchyard  amongst  the  Mountains,' 
would  have  claimed  the  profoundest  attention),  we  yield 
less  to  our  own  opinion  than  to  that  of  the  public.  Or, 
perhaps,  it  is  not  so  much  the  public  as  the  vulgar 
opinion,  governed  entirely  by  the  consideration  that 
"  The  Excursion  "  is  very  much  the  longest  poem  of  its 
author ;  and,  secondly,  that  it  bears  currently  the  title 
of  a  philosophic  poem  ;  on  which  account  it  is  presumed 
to  have  a  higher  dignity.  The  big  name  and  the  big 
size  are  allowed  to  settle  its  rank.  But  in  this  there  is 
much  delusion.  In  the  very  scheme  and  movement  of 
"  The  Excursion  "  there  are  two  defects  which  interfere 
greatly  with  its  power  to  act  upon, the  mind  as  a  whole, 
or  with  any  effect  of  unity ;  so  that,  infallibly  it  will  be 
read,  by  future  generations,  in  parts  and  fragments ; 
and,  being  thus  virtually  dismembered  into  many  small 
poems,  it  will  scarcely  justify  men  in  allowing  it  the 
rank  of  a  long  one.  One  of  these  defects  is  the  undula- 
tory  character  of  the  course  pursued  by  the  poem,  which 


resistance  to  the  revolution  was,  in  many  high  quarters,  a  sacred 
duty  ;  and  that  this  resistance  it  was  which  forced  out,  from  the 
Revolution  itself,  the  benefits  which  it  has  since  diffused.  To  speak 
by  the  language  of  mechanics,  the  case  was  one  which  illustrated 
the  composition  of  forces.  Neither  the  Revolution  singly,  nor  the 
resistance  to  the  Revolution  singly,  was  calculated  to  regenerate 
social  man.  But  the  two  forces  in  union  —  where  the  one  modified 
mitigated,  or  even  neutralized  the  other,  at  times,  and  where,  at 
times,  each  entered  into  a  happy  combination  with  the  other^ 
— yielded  for  the  world  those  benefits  which,  by  its  separate  ten^ 
'lency,  either  of  the  two  was  fitted  to  stifle. 


ON    WOEDSWORTH'b    POETElf. 


519 


does  not  ascend  uniformly,  or   even  keep  one   steady 
level,  but  trespasses,  as  if  by   forgetfulness,  or  chance, 
into  topics  furnishing  little  inspiration,  and  not  always 
closely  connected  with  the  presiding  theme.    In  part  this 
arises  from  the  accident  that  a  slight  tissue  of  narrative 
connects  the  different  sections  ;  and  to  this  the  movement 
of    the    narrative,   the    fluctuations    of  the    speculative 
themes,  are  in  part  obedient :  the  succession  of  the  inc  i- 
dents  becomes  a  law  for  the  succession  of  the  thoughts, 
as    oftentimes  it  happens  that  these  incidents  are  the 
proximate  occasions  of  the  thoughts.     Yet,  as  the  narra- 
tive  is  not  of  a  nature  to  be  moulded  by  any  determinate 
principle  of  coercing  passion,  but  bends  easily  to  the  ca- 
prices of  chance  and  the  moment,  unavoidably  it  stamps, 
by  reaction,  a  desultory  or  even  incoherent   character 
upon   the   train   of  the    philosophic   discussions.     You 
know  not  what  is  coming  next;  and,  when  it  does  como, 
you  do  not  always  know  why  it  comes.     This  has  the 
effect  of  crumbling  the  poem  into  separate  segments, 
and  causes  the  whole  (when  looked  at  a5  a  whole)  to 
appear  a  rope  of  sand.     A  second  defect  lies  in  the  col- 
loquial form  which  the  poem  sometimes  assumes.     It  is 
QAngerous  to  conduct  a  philosophic  discussion  by  talking. 
If  the  nature  of  the  argument  could  be  supposed  to  roll 
through  logical  quillets,  or  metaphysical  conundrums,  so 
that,  ^on   putting   forward   a   problem,  the  interlocutor 
could  bring  matters  to  a  crisis,  by  saying,  "  Do  you  give 
it  up  ?  "—  in  that  case  there  might  be  a  smart  reciproca- 
tion of  dialogue,  of  swearing  and  denying,  giving  and 
taking,   butting,   rebutting,  and  "  surrebutting ;"  ^    and 

1  «  Surrebutting  :"  this  is  not,  directly,  a  term  from  Aristotle's 


520  ON    WORDSWORTH'S    POETRY. 

this  would  confer  an  interlocutory  or  amcBbcean  cliaracter 
upon  the  process  of  altercation.  But  the  topics,  and  the 
quality  of  the  arguments  being  moral,  in  which  always 
the  reconciliation  of  the  feelings  is  to  be  secured  by 
gradual  persuasion,  rather  than  the  understanding  to  be 
floored  by  a  solitary  blow,  inevitably  it  becomes  impos- 
sible that  anything  of  this  brilliant  conversational  sword- 
play,  cut-and-thrust,  "  carte  "  and  "  tierce,"  can  make  for 
itself  an  opening.  Mere  decorum  requires  that  the 
speakers  should  be  prosy.  And  you  yourself,  though 
sometimes  disposed  to  say,  "  Do  now,  dear  old  soul,  cut 
it  short,"  are  sensible  that  he  cannot  cut  it  short.  Dis- 
quisitions, in  a  certain  key,  can  no  more  turn  round 
upon  a  sixpence  than  a  coach-and-six.  They  must  have 
sea-room  to  "  wear  "  ship,  and  to  tack.  This  in  itself  is 
often  tedious  ;  but  it  leads  to  a  worse  tediousness :  a 
practised  eye  sees  from  afar  the  whole  evolution  of  the 
coming  argument ;  and  then,  besides  the  pain  of  hearing 
the  parties  preach,  you  hear  them  preach  from  a  text 
which  already  in  germ  had  warned  you  of  all  the  buds 
and  blossoms  which  it  was  laboriously  to  produce.  And 
this  second  blemish,  unavoidable  if  the  method  of  dia- 
logue IS  adopted,  becomes  more  painfully  apparent 
through  a  third,  almost  inalienable  from  the  natural 
constitution  of  the  subjects  concerned.  It  is,  that  in 
cases  where  a  large  interest  of  human  nature  is  treated, 
such  as  the  position  of  man  in  this  world,  his  duties,  hia 
difficulties,  many  parts  become  necessary  as  transitiona . 

mint,  but  indirectly  it  is  ;  for  it  belongs  to  the  old  science  of 
"  special  pleading,"  which,  in  part,  is  an  offset  from  the  Aristote- 
lian logio. 


ON  wordswouth's  poetry.  521 

jr  connecting  links,  which,  per  se,  are  not  attractive,  nor 
can  by  any  art  be  made  so.  Treating  the  whole  theme 
in  extenso,  the  poet  is  driven,  by  natural  corollary,  or  by 
objections  too  obvious  to  be  evaded,  into  discussions  not 
chcsen  by  his  own  taste,  but  dictated  by  the  logic  or 
the  tendencies  of  the  question,  and  by  the  impossibility 
of  dismissing  with  partiality  any  one  branch  of  a  subject 
which  is  essential  to  the  integrity  of  the  saeculation, 
simply  because  it  is  at  war  with  the  brilliancy  of  its 
development. 

Not,  therefore,  in  "  The  Excursion  "  must  we  look 
for  that  reversionary  influence  which  awaits  Words- 
worth with  posterity.  It  is  the  vulgar  superstition  in 
behalf  of  big  books  and  sounding  titles ;  it  is  the  weak 
ness  of  supposino^  no  book  entitled  to  be  considered  a 
power  in  the  literature  of  the  land,  unless  physicallv  it 
is  weighty,  that  must  have  prevailed  upon  Coleridge 
and  others  to  undervalue,  by  comparison  with  the  direc^' 
philosophic  poetry  of  Wordsworth,  those  earlier  poems 
which  are  all  short,  but  generally  scintillating  with 
gems  of  far  profounder  truth.  Let  the  reader  under- 
stand, however,  that,  by  "truth,"  I  understand,  not 
merely  that  truth  which  takes  the  shape  of  a  formal 
proposition,  reducible  to  "  mood "  and  "  figure,"  but 
truth  which  suddenly  strengthens  into  solemnity  an  nn- 
pression  very  feebly  acknowledged  previously,  or  truth 
which  suddenly  unveils  a  connection  between  objects 
always  before  regarded  as  irrelate  and  independent.  In 
astronomy,  to  gain  the  rank  of  discoverer,  ii  is  not 
required  that  you  should  reveal  a  star  absolutely  new ; 
find  out  with  respect  to  an  old  star  some  new  affection  — 
as,  for  instance,  that  it  has  an  ascertainable  parallax  — 


522  ON  w  JE  dsworth's  poetry. 

and  immediately  you  bring  it  within  the  verge  of  a 
(^  human  interest ;  or  of  some  old  familiar  planet,  that  its 
satellites  suffer  periodical  eclipses,  and  immediately  you 
bring  it  within  the  verge  of  terrestrial  uses.  Gleams  of 
steadier  vision,  that  brighten  into  certainty  appearances  else 
doubtful,  or  that  unfold  relations  else  unsuspectedi  are 
not  less  discoveries  of  truth  than  the  revelations  of  the 
telescope,  or  the  conquests  of  the  diving-bell.  It  is 
astonishing  how  large  a  harvest  of  new  truths  would  be 
reaped,  simply  through  the  accident  of  a  man's  feeling, 
or  being  made  to  feel,  more  deeply  than  other  men.  He 
sees  the  same  objects,  neither  more  nor  fewer,  but  he 
sees  them  engraved  in  lines  far  stronger  and  more  deter- 
minate ;  and  the  difference  in  the  strength  makes  the 
whole  difference  between  consciousness  and  sub-con- 
sciousness. And  in  questions  of  the  mere  understanding, 
we  see  the  same  fact  illustrated  :  the  author  who  rivets 
notice  the  most,  is  not  he  that  perplexes  men  by  truths 
drawn  from  fountains  of  absolute  novelty, —  truths  un- 
sunned as  yet,  and  obscure  from  that  cause  ;  but  he  that 
awakens  into  illuminated  consciousness  old  lineaments  of 
truth  long  slumbering  m  the  mind,  although  too  faint  to 
nave  extorted  attention.  Wordsworth  has  brought  many 
a  truth  into  life,  both  for  the  eye  and  for  the  understand- 
ing, which  previously  had  slumbered  indistinctly  for  all 
men. 

For  instance,  as  respects  the  eye,  who  does  not  ac- 
knowledge instantaneously  the  strength  of  reality  in 
that  saying  upon  a  cataract  seen  from  a  station  two 
miles  off,  that  it  was  "  frozen  by  distance "  ?  In  all 
nature  there  is  not  an  object  so  essentially  at  war  with 
the  stiffening  of  .frost,  as  the  headlong  and  desperate  life 


ON    WORDSWORTH'S    POETRY.  523 

ot  a  cataract ;  and  yet  notoriously  the  effect  of  distance 
is  to  lock  up  this  frenzy  of  motion  into  the  most  petrific 
column  of  stillness.  This  effect  is  perceived  at  once 
when  pointed  out ;  but  how  few  are  the  eyes  that  ever 
would  have  perceived  it  for  themselves !  Twilight, 
again,  —  who  before  Wordsworth  ever  distinctly  noticed 
its  abstracting  power  ?  —  that  power  of  removing,  soften- 
ing, harmonizing,  by  which  a  mode  of  obscurity  executes 
for  the  eye  the  same  mysterious  ofRce  which  the  mind  so 
often  within  its  own  shadowy  realms  executes  for  itself. 
In  the  dim  interspace  between  day  and  night,  all  disap- 
pears from  our  earthly  scenery,  as  if  touched  by  an 
enchanter's  rod,  which  is  either  mean  or  inharmonious, 
or  unquiet,  or  expressive  of  temporary  things.  Leaning 
ag-ainst  a  column  of  rock,  looking  down  upon  a  lake  or 
river,  and  at  intervals  carrying  your  eyes  forward 
through  a  vista  of  mountains,  you  become  aware  that 
your  sight  rests  upon  the  very  same  spectacle,  unaltered 
in  a  single  feature,  which  once  at  the  same  hour  was 
beheld  by  the  legionary  Koman  from  his  embattled 
camp,  or  by  the  roving  Briton  in  his  "  wolf-skin  vest,' 
lying  down  to  sleep,  and  looking 

•'  through  some  leafy  bower, 


Before  his  eyes  were  closed." 

How  magnificent  is  the  summary  or  abstraction  of 
the  elementary  features  in  such  a  scene,  as  executed 
by  the  poet  himself,  in  illustration  of  this  abstraction 
daily  executed  by  nature,  through  her  handmaid  Twi- 
light !   Listen,  reader,  to  the  closing  stram,  solemn  as 


524  ON  Wordsworth's  poetry. 

twilight  is  solemn,  and  grand  as  the  spectacle  which  it 
describes :  — 

"  By  him  [t.  e.,  the  roving  Briton]  was  seen, 
The  self-same  visrion  which  we  now  behold, 
At  thy  meek  bidding,  shadowy  Power,  brought  forth. 
These  mighty  barriers,  and  the  gulf  between  ; 
The  floods,  the  stars,  —  a  spectacle  as  old 
As  the  beginning  of  the  heavens  and  earth." 

Another  great  field  there  is  amongst  the  pomps  of 
nature,  which,  if  Wordsworth  did  not  first  notice,  he 
certainly  has  noticed  most  circumstantially.  I  speak  of 
\  cloud-scenery,  or  those  pageants  of  sky -built  architecture, 
which  sometimes  in  summer,  at  noon-day,  and  in  all  sea- 
sons about  sunset,  arrest  or  appal  the  meditative  ;  "  per- 
plexing monarchs "  with  the  spectacle  of  armies  ma- 
no^.uvring,  or  deepening  the  solemnity  of  evening  by 
towering  edifices  that  mimic  —  but  which  also  in  mimick- 
ing mock  —  the  transitory  grandeurs  of  man.  It  is 
singular  that  these  gorgeous  phenomena,  not  less  than 
those  of  the  Aurora  Borealis,  have  been  so  little  noticed 
by  poets.  The  Aurora  was  naturally  neglected  by  the 
southern  poets  of  Greece  and  Rome,  as  not  much  seen  in 
their  latitudes.*     But  the  cloud-architecture  of  the  day- 

*  But  then,  says  the  reader,  why  is  it  not  proportionably  the 
more  noticed  by  poets  of  the  north  ?  Certainly,  that  question  is 
t&ir.  And  the  answer,  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  doubt,  is  this  :  — 
That  until  the  rise  of  Natural  Philosophy,  in  Charles  the  Second's 
reign,  there  was  no  7)a.me  for  the  appearance  ;  on  which  account, 
some  writers  have  been  absurd  enough  to  believe  that  the  Aurora 
did  not  exist,  noticeably,  until  about  1690.  Shakspeare,  in  his 
journey  down  to  Stratford  (always  performed  on  horseback) ,  must 
erten  have  been  belated  :  he  must  sometimes  have  seen,  he  could 
aot  but  have  admired,  the  fiery  skirmishes  of  the  Aurora.     And 


ON   WORDSWORTH'S    POETRY.  625 

ight  belongs  alike  to  north  and  south.  Accordingly,  1 
remember  one  notice  of  it  in  Hesiod,  a  case  were  the 
clouds  exhibited 

"  The  beauteous  semblance  of  a  flock  at  rest." 

Another  there  is,  a  thousand  years  later,  m  Lucan : 
amongst  the  portents  which  prefigured  the  dreadful  con- 
vulsions destined  to  shake  the  earth  at  Pharsalia,  is 
noticed  by  him  some  fiery  coruscation  of  arms  in  the 
heavens ;  but,  so  far  as  I  recollect,  the  appearances  might 
have  belonged  equally  to  the  workmanship  of  the  clouds 
or  the  Aurora.  Up  and  down  the  next  eight  hundred 
years  are  scattered  evanescent  allusions  to  these  vapory 
appearances  ;  in  Hamlet  and  elsewhere  occur  gleams  of 
such  allusions ;  but  I  remember  no  distinct  picture  of 
one  before  that  in  the  "  Antony  and  Cleopatra "  of 
Shakspeare,  beginning, 

"  Sometimes  we  see  a  cloud  that 's  dragonish." 

Subsequently  to  Shakspeare,  these  notices,  as  of  all 
nhenomena  whatsoever  that  demanded  a  familiarity  with 
nature  in  the  spirit  of  love,  became  rarer  and  rarer.  At 
length,  as  the  eighteenth  century  was  winding  up  its 
accounts,  forth  stepped  William  Wordsworth,  of  whom, 
as  a  reader  of  all  pages  in  nature,  it  may  be  said  that, 
if  we  except  Dampier,  the  admirable  buccaneer,  and 
some  few  professional  naturalists,  he  first  and  he  last 
looked  at  natural  objects  with  the  eye  that  neither  will 
be  dazzled  from  without  nor  cheated  by  preconceptions 
from  within.     Most  men  look  at  nature  in  the  hurry  of 

fet,  for  want  of  a  word  to  fix  and  identify  the  object,  how  could 
ke  introduce  it  as  an  image  or  allusion  in  his  writings ' 


526  ON  wordswokth's  poetri 

R  confusion  that  distinguishes  nothing;  tkeir  error  ia 
from  without.  Pope,  again,  and  many  who  live  in 
towns,*  make  such  blunders  as  that  of  supposing  the 
moon  to  tip  with  silver  the  hills  behhid  which  she  is  ris- 
ing, not  by  erroneous  use  of  their  eyes  (for  they  use 
them  not  at  all),  but  by  inveterate  preconceptions. 
Scarcely  has  there  been  a  poet  with  what  could  be  called 
a  learned  eye,  or  an  eye  extensively  learned,  before 
Wordsworth.  Much  affectation  there  has  been  of  that 
sort  since  his  rise,  and  at  all  times  much  counterfeit 
enthusiasm ;  but  the  sum  of  the  matter  is  this,  that 
Wordsworth  had  his  passion  for  nature  fixed  in  his  blood  ; 
—  it  was  a  necessity,  like  that  of  the  mulberry-leaf  to 
the  silk-worm  ;  and  through  his  commerce  with  nature 
did  he  live  and  breathe.  Hence  it  was,  namely,  from  the 
truth  of  his  love,  that  his  knowledge  grew ;  whilst  most 
others,  being  merely  hypocrites  in  their  love,  have 
turned  out  merely  charlatuTis  in  their  knowledge.  This 
chapter,  therefore,  of  sky  scenery,  may  be  said  to  have 
been  revivified  amongst  the  resources  of  poetry  by 
Wordsworth  —  rekindled,  if  not  absolutely  kindled. 
The  sublime  scene  endorsed  upon  the  draperies  of  the 
storm  in  "  The  Excursion,"  —  that  witnessed  upon  the 
passage   of  the    Hamilton   Hills    in    Yorkshire, — the 

*  It  was  not,  however,  that  all  poets  then  lived  in  towns  ;  neither 
had  Pope  himself  generally  lived  in  towns.  But  it  is  perfectly 
useless  to  be  familiar  with  nature  unless  there  is  a  public  trained 
to  love  and  value  nature.  It  is  not  what  the  individual  sees  that 
will  fix  itself  as  beautiful  in  his  recollections,  but  what  he  sees 
under  a  consciousness  that  others  will  sympathize  with  his  feelings 
Under  any  other  circumstances  familiarity  does  but  realize  the 
%dage,  and  "  breeds  contempt."  The  great  despisers  of  rurau 
scenery  are  rustics. 


ON    WORDSWORTH  S    POKTRY. 


527 


ioletnn  "  sky  prospect "  from  the  fields  of  France,  are 
unrivalled  in  that  order  of  composition ;  and  in  one  of 
these  records  Wordsworth  has  given  first  of  all  the  true 
key-note  of  the  sentiment  belonging  to  these  grand 
pageants.  They  are,  says  the  poet,  speaking  in  a  case 
where  the  appearance  had  occurred  towards  night, 

"  Meek  nature's  evening  comment  on  the  shows 
And  all  the  fuming  vanities  of  earth  ' ' 

^es,  that  IS  the  secret  moral  whispered  to  the  mind. 
These  mimicries  express  the  laughter  which  is  in  heaven 
at  earthly  pomps.  Frail  and  vapory  are  the  glories  of 
man,  even  as  the  parodies  of  those  glories  are  frail 
which  nature  weaves  in  clouds. 

As  another  of  those  natural  appearances  which  must 
have  haunted  men's  eyes  since  the  Flood,  but  yet  had 
never  forced  itself  into  conscious  notice  until  arrested  by 
Wordsworth,  I  may  notice  an  effect  of  iteration  daily 
exhibited  in  the  habits  of  cattle  :  — 

"  The  cattle  are  grazing. 
Their  heads  never  raising  , 
There  are  forty  feeding  like  one." 

Now,  merely  as  a  fact,  and  if  it  were  nothing  more,  this 
characteristic  appearance  in  the  habits  of  cows,  when  all 
repeat  the  action  of  each,  ought  not  to  have  been  over- 
'ooked  by  those  who  profess  themselves  engaged  in 
Lolding  up  a  mirror  to  nature.  But  the  fact  has  also  a 
profound  meaning  as  a  hieroglyphic.  In  all  animals 
which  live  under  the  protection  of  man  a  life  of  peace 
and  quietness,  but  do  not  share  in  his  labors  or  in  his 
pleasures,  what  we  regard  is  the  species,  and   .<iot  the 


528  ON    WORDSWORTH  S   POETRY. 

individual.  Nobody  but  a  grazier  ever  looks  at  one  cow 
amongst  a  field  of  cows,  or  at  one  sheep  in  a  flock.  But 
as  to  those  animals  which  are  more  closely  connected 
with  man,  not  passively  connected,  but  actively,  bemg 
partners  in  his  toils  and  perils  and  recreations,  such  as 
horses,  dogs,  falcons,  they  are  regarded  as  individuals,  and 
are  allowed  the  benefit  of  an  individual  interest.  It  is  not 
that  cows  have  not  a  differential  character,  each  for  her- 
self; and  sheep,  it  is  well  known,  have  all  a  separate 
physiognomy  for  the  shepherd  who  has  cultivated  their 
acquaintance.  But  men  generally  have  no  opportunity 
or  motive  for  studying  the  individualities  of  creatures, 
however  otherwise  respectable,  that  are  too  much  re- 
garded by  all  of  us  in  the  reversionary  light  of  milk,  and 
beef,  and  mutton.  Far  otherwise  it  is  with  horses,  who 
share  in  man's  martial  risks,  who  sympathize  with  man's 
frenzy  in  hunting,  who  divide  with  man  the  burdens  of 
noonday.  Far  otherwise  it  is  with  dogs,  that  share  the 
hearths  of  man,  and  adore  the  footsteps  of  his  children. 
These  man  loves ;  of  these  he  makes  dear,  though  hum- 
ble friends.  These  often  fight  for  him  ;  and  for  them  he 
he  will  sometimes  fight.  Of  necessity,  therefore,  every 
horse  and  every  dog  is  an  individual  —  has  a  sort  of 
V)ersonality  that  makes  him  separately  interesting —  has 
a  beauty  and  a  character  of  his  own.  Go  to  Melton, 
therefore,  and  what  will  you  see  ?  Every  man,  every 
horse,  every  dog,  glorying  in  the  plentitude  of  life,  is  in 
a  diflferent  attitude,  motion,  gesture,  action.  It  is  not 
there  the  sublime  unity  which  you  must  seek,  where 
forty  are  like  one  ;  but  the  sublime  infinity,  like  that  of 
wean,  like  that  of  Flora,  like  that  of  nature,  where  no 


ON   WORDSWORTH  S    POETRY.  029 

"epetitions  are  endured,  no  leaf  the  copy  of  another  leaf 
no  absolute  identity,  and  no  painful  tautologies.  This 
Bubject  might  be  pursued  into  profounder  recesses  ;  but 
in  a  popular  discussion  it  is  necessary  to  forbear. 

A  volume  might  be  filled  with  such  glimpses  of 
novelty  as  Wordsworth  has  first  laid  bare,  even  to  the 
apprehension  of  the  se?ises.  For  the  UTiderstandhig, 
when  moving  in  the  same  track  of  human  sensibilities, 
he  has  done  only  not  so  much.  How  often  (to  give 
an  instance  or  two)  must  the  human  heart  have  felt 
that  there  are  sorrows  which  descend  far  below  the 
region  in  which  tears  gather;  and  yet  who  has  ever 
given  utterance  to  this  feeling  until  Wordsworth  came 
with  his  immortal  line  — 

\  "  Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears  "  ' 

This  sentiment,  and  others  that  might  be  adduced 
(such  as  '•  The  child  is  father  of  the  man"),  have  even 
passed  into  the  popular  mind,  and  are  often  quoted  by 
those  who  know  not  whom  they  are  quoting.  Magnif- 
icent, again,  is  the  sentiment,  and  yet  an  echo  to  one 
which  lurks  amongst  all  hearts,  in  relation  to  the 
frailty  of  merely  human  schemes  for  working  good, 
which  so  often  droop  and  collapse  through  the  unsteadi- 
ness of  human  energies, — 

"  foundations  must  be  laid 


In  Heaven." 

How^  Foundations  laid  in  realms  that  are  above' 
But  t/iat  is  at  war  with  physics  ;  —  foundations  must 
be  laid  below.  Yes  ;  and  even  so  the  poet  throws  the 
mind  yet  more  forcibly  on  the  hyperphysical  character 
34 


530  ON  -Wordsworth's  poetry. 

—  on  the  grandeur  transcending  all  physics  —  of  those 
shadowy  fountains  which  alone  are  enduring. 

But  the  great  distinction  of  Wordsworth,  and  the 
pledge  of  his  increasing  popularity,  is  the  extent  of  his 
sympathy  with  what  is  really  permanent  in  human  feel- 
ings, and  also  the  depth  of  this  sympathy.  Young  and 
Cowper,  the  two  earlier  leaders  in  the  province  of  medi- 
tative poetry,  are  too  circumscribed  in  the  range  of  their 
sym])athies,  too  exclusive,  and  oftentimes  not  sufficiently 
profound.  Both  these  poets  manifested  the  quality  of 
their  strength  by  the  quality  of  their  public  reception. 
Popular  in  some  degree  from  the  first,  they  entered  upon 
the  inheritance  of  their  fame  almost  at  once.  Far  dif- 
ferent was  the  fate  of  Wordsworth  ;  for,  in  poetry  of  this 
class,  which  appeals  to  what  lies  deepest  in  man,  in 
proportion  to  the  native  power  of  the  poet,  and  his  fitness 
for  permanent  life,  is  the  strength  of  resistance  in  the 
public  taste.  Whatever  is  too  original  will  be  hated  at 
the  first.  It  must  slowly  mould  a  public  for  itself;  and 
the  resistance  of  the  early  thoughtless  judgments  must 
be  overcome  by  a  counter  resistance  to  itself,  in  a  better 
audience  slowly  mustering  against  the  first.  Forty  and 
seven  years  *  it  is  since  William  Wordsworth  first  ap- 
peared as  an  author.  Twenty  of  those  years  he  was  the 
Bcoff"  of  the  world,  and  his  poetry  a  by-word  of  scorn. 
Since  then,  and  more  than  once,  senates  have  rung  with 
acclamations  to  the  echo  of  his  name.  Now  at  this 
moment,  while  we  are  talking  about  him,  he  has  entered 
upon  his  seventy-sixth  year.  For  himself,  according  to 
the  course  of  nature,  he  cannot  be  far  from  his  setting; 
but  his  poetry  is  but  now  clearing  the  clouds  that  gath- 
ered about  its  rising.  Meditative  poetry  is  perhaps  tha 
*  Written  in  1845. 


ON    WORDSWORTH  S    POETRY.  531 

ivhich  will  finally  maintain  most  power  .upon  generations 
more  thoughtful ;  and  in  this  department,  at  least,  there 
is  little  competition  to  be  appprehended  by  Wordsworth 
from  anything  that  has  appeared  since  the  death  of 
Shakspeare.^ 


OS 

THE   KNOCKING  AT  THE   GATE 

IN  MACBETH. 

"  Whence  is  that  knocking  ? 

How  is  't  with  me,  when  every  noise  appals  meT 

What  hands  are  here?  ha !  they  pluck  out  mine  eyes. 

WiU  all  great  Neptune's  ocean  wash  this  blood 

Clean  from  my  hand?  No,  this  my  hand  will  rather 

The  multitudinous  seas  incarnadine, 

Making  the  green  one  red." 

Macbeth,  Act  II.,  Scene  2. 

Fkom  my  boyish  days  I  had  always  felt  a  great 
perplexity  on  one  point  in  Macbeth.  It  was  this  :  the 
knocking  at  the  gate,  which  succeeds  to  the  murder  of 
Duncanrproduced  to  my  feelings  an  effect  for  which  1 
never  could  account.  The  effect  was,  that  it  reflected 
back  upon  the  murder  a  peculiar  awfulness  and  a  depth 
of  solemnity  ;  yet,  however  obstinately  I  endeavored 
with  my  understanding  to  comprehend  this,  for  many 
yeai-8  I  never  could  see  why  it  should  produce  such  an 
effect. 

Here  I  pause  for  one  moment  to  exhort  the  reader 
Qever  to  pay  any  attention  to  his  understanding,  when 
;t  stands  in  opposition  to  any  other  faculty  of  his  mmd. 
The  mere  understanding,  however  useful  and  mdispen- 
Bable,  is  the  meanest  faculty  in  the  human  mind,  and 
Jie  most  to  be  distrusted  ;  and  yet  tlie  great  majority 


534  MACBETH. 

oi  people  trust  to  nothing  else  ;  which,  may  do  for 
ordinary  life,  but  not  for  philosophical  purposes.  Of 
this  out  of  ten  thousand  instances  that  I  might  produce, 
I  will  cite  one.  Ask  of  any  person  whatsoever,  who  is 
not  previously  prepared  for  the  demand  by  a  knowledge 
of  perspective,  to  draw  in  the  rudest  way  the  com- 
monest appearance  which  depends  upon  the  laws  of 
that  science  ;  as,  for  instance,  to  represent  the  effect  of 
two  walls  standing  at  right  angles  to  each  other,  or 
the  appearance  of  the  houses  on  each  side  of  a  street, 
as  seen  by  a  person  looking  down  the  street  from  one 
extremity.  Now,  in  all  cases,  unless  the  person  has 
happened  to  observe  in  pictures  how  it  is  that  artists 
produce  these  effects,  he  will  be  utterly  unable  to  make 
the  smallest  approximation  to  it.  Yet  why  ?  For  he 
has  actually  seen  the  effect  every  day  of  his  life.  The 
reason  is  —  that  he  allows  his  understanding  to  over- 
rule his  eyes.  His  understanding,  which  includes  no 
intuitive  knowledge  of  the  laws  of  vision,  can  furnish 
him  with  no  reason  why  a  line  which  is  known  and  can 
be  proved  to  be  a  horizontal  line,  should  not  appear  a 
horizontal  line  ;  a  line  that  made  any  angle  with  the 
perpendicular,  less  than  a  right  angle,  would  seem  to 
him  to  indicate  that  his  houses  were  all  tumbling  down 
together.  Accordingly,  he  makes  the  line  of  his  houses 
a  horizontal  line,  and  fails,  of  course,  to  produce  the 
effect  demanded.  Here,  then,  is  one  instance  out  of 
many,  in  which  not  only  the  understanding  is  allowed 
to  overrule  the  eyes,  but  where  the  understanding  is 
positively  allowed  to  obliterate  the  eyes,  as  it  were,  for 
not  only  does  the  man  believe  the  evidence  of  his 
understanding,  in  opposition  to  that  of  his  eyes,  but, 
(what  is  monstrous  !)  the  idiot  is  not  aware  that  his 


MACBETH.  535 

eyes  ever  gave  such  evidence.  He  does  not  know  that 
he  has  seen  (and  therefore  quoad  his  consciousness  has 
not  seen)  that  which  he  has  seen  every  day  of  his 
Ufe. 

But  to  return  from  this  digression,  my  understanding 
could  furnish  no  reason  why  the  knocking  at  the  gate 
in  Macbeth  should  produce  any  effect  direct  or  re- 
flected. In  fact,  my  understanding  said  positively  that 
it  could  not  produce  any  effect.  But  I  knew  better ;  I 
felt  that  it  did  ;  and  I  waited  and  clung  to  the  problem 
until  further  knowledge  should  enable  me  to  solve  it. 
At  length,  in  1812,  Mr.  Williams  made  his  debut  ou 
the  stage  of  Ratcliffe  Highway,  and  executed  those 
unparalleled  murders  which  have  procured  for  him 
such  a  brilliant  and  undying  reputation.  On  which 
murders,  by  the  way,  I  must  observe,  that  in  one 
respect  they  have  had  an  ill  effect,  by  making  the 
connoisseur  in  murder  very  fastidious  in  his  taste,  and 
dissatisfied  by  anything  that  has  since  been  done  in 
that  line.  All  other  murders  look  pale  by  the  deep 
crimson  of  his  ;  and,  as  an  amateur  once  said  to  me 
in  a  querulous  tone,  '  There  has  been  absolutely 
nothing  doing  since  his  time,  or  nothing  that's  worth 
speaking  of.'  But  this  is  wrong  ;  for  it  is  unreasonable 
to  expect  all  men  to  be  great  artists,  and  born  with  the 
genius  of  Mr.  Williams.  Now  it  will  be  remembered, 
that  in  the  first  of  these  murders,  (that  of  the  Marrs,) 
the  same  incident  (of  a  knocking  at  the  door,  soon  after 
the  work  of  extermination  was  coinplete)  did  actually 
occur,  which  the  genius  of  Shakspeare  has  invented  ; 
and  all  good  judges,  and  the  most  eminent  dilettanti, 
acknowledged  the  felicity  of  Shakspeare's  suggestion, 
as  soon  as  it  was  actually  realized.     Here,  then,  was  a 


536  MACBETH. 

fresh  proof  that  I  was  right  in  relying  on  my  own  feel- 
ing, in  opposition  to  my  understanding ;  and  I  again  set 
myseli  to  study  the  problem ;  at  length  I  solved  it  to 
my  own  satisfaction ;  and  my  solution  is  this.  Murder, 
in  ordinary  cases,  where  the  sympathy  is  wholly  di- 
rected to  the  case  of  the  murdered  person,  is  an  incident 
of  coarse  and  vulgar  horror  ;  and  for  this  reason,  that 
it  flings  the  interest  exclusively  upon  the  natural  but 
ignoble  instinct  by  which  we  cleave  to  life  ;  an  in- 
stinct, which,  as  being  indispensable  to  the  primal 
law  of  self-preservation,  is  the  same  in  kind,  (though 
different  in  degree,)  amongst  all  living  creatures  ;  this 
instinct,  therefore,  because  it  annihilates  all  distinc- 
tions, and  degrades  the  greatest  of  men  to  the  level  of 
'  the  poor  beetle  that  we  tread  on,'  exhibits  human  na- 
ture in  its  most  abject  and  humiliating  attitude.  Such 
an  attitude  would  little  suit  the  purposes  of  the  poetv 
What  then  must  he  do  ?  He  must  throw  the  interest 
on  the  murderer.  Our  sympathy  must  be  with  him  ; 
(of  course  I  mean  a  sympathy  of  comprehension,  a 
sympathy  by  which  we  enter  into  his  feelings,  and  are 
made  to  understand  them,  —  not  a  sympathy  i  of  pii^y 
or  approbation.)  In  the  murdered  person,  all  strife 
of  thought,  all  flux  and  reflux  of  passion  and  of  pur- 

*  It  seems  almost  ludicrous  to  guard  and  explain  my  use  of  a 
word,  in  a  situation  where  it  would  naturally  explain  itself 
But  it  has  become  necessary  to  do  so,  in  consequence  of  the 
unscholarlike  use  of  the  word  sympathy,  at  present  so  general, 
by  which,  instead  of  taking  it  in  its  proper  sense,  as  the  act  of 
reproducing  in  our  minds  the  feelings  of  another,  whether  for 
hatred,  indignation,  love,  pity,  or  approbation,  it  is  made  a 
mere  synonyme  of  the  word  pity  ;  and  hence,  instead  of  saying 
sympathy  with  another,'  many  writers  adopt  the  monsti'ous 
^rbarism  of  '  sympathy /or  another.' 


IIACBETH.  537 

pose,  are  crushed  by  one  overwhelming  panic ;  the 
fear  of  instant  death  smites  him  '  with  its  petrific  mace.' 
But  in  the  murderer,  such  a  murderer  as  a  poet  • 
will  condescend  to,  there  must  be  raging  some  great 
storm  of  passion, — jealousy,  ambition,  vengeance, 
hatred,  —  which  will  create  a  hell  within  him ;  and 
into  this  hell  we  are  to  look. 

In  Macbeth,  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  his  own  enor- 
mous and  teeming  faculty  of  creation,  Shakspeare  has 
introduced  two  murderers ;  and,  as  usual  in  his  hands, 
they  are  remarkably  discriminated :  but,  though  in 
Macbeth  the  strife  of  mind  is  greater  than  in  his  Avife, 
the  tiger  spirit  not  so  awake,  and  his  feelings  caught 
chiefly  by  contagion  from  her,  —  yet,  as  both  were 
finally  involved  in  the  guilt  of  murder,  the  murderous 
mind  of  necessity  is  finally  to  be  presumed  in  both. 
This  was  to  be  expressed ;  and  on  its  own  account,  as 
well  as  to  make  it  a  more  proportionable  antagonist  to 
the  unoffending  nature  of  their  victim,  '  the  gracious 
Duncan,'  and  adequately  to  expound  '  the  deep  damna- 
tion of  his  taking  off,'  this  was  to  be  expressed  with 
peculiar  energy.  We  were  to  be  made  to  feel  that  the,__ 
human  nature,  i.  e.,  the  divine  nature  of  love  and 
mercy,  spread  through  the  hearts  of  all  creatures,  and 
seldom  utterly  withdrawn  from  man,  —  was  gone,  van- 
ished, extinct ;  and  that  the  fiendish  nature  had  taken 
its  place.  And,  as  this  effect  is  marvellously  accom- 
plished in  the  dialogues  and  soliloquies  themselves,  so 
it  is  finally  consummated  by  the  expedient  under  con- 
sideration ;  and  it  is  to  this  that  I  now  solicit  the  , 
reader's  attention.  If  the  reader  has  ever  witnessed  a 
wife,  daughter,  or  sister,  in  a  fainting  fit,  he  may  chance 
to  have  observed  that  the  most  affecting  moment  in 


533  MACBETH. 

such,  a  spectacle,  is  that  in  wliicli  a  sigh  and  a  stirring 
announce  the  recommencement  of  suspended  life.  Or, 
if  the  reader  has  ever  been  present  in  a  vast  metropolis, 
on  the  day  when  some  great  national  idol  was  carried 
in  funeral  pomp  to  his  grave,  and  chancing  to  walk 
near  the  course  through  which  it  passed,  has  felt  pow- 
erfully, in  the  silence  and  desertion  of  the  streets,  and 
in  the  stagnation  of  ordinary  business,  the  deep  interest 
which  at  that  moment  was  possessing  the  heart  of  man, 
—  if  all  at  once  he  should  hear  the  death-like  stillness 
broken  up  by  the  sound  of  wheels  rattling  away  from 
the  scene,  and  making  known  that  the  transitory  vision 
was  dissolved,  he  will  be  aware  that  at  no  moment  was 
his  sense  of  the  complete  suspension  and  pause  in 
ordinary  human  concerns  so  full  and  aflecting,  as  at 
that  moment  when  the  suspension  ceases,  and  the  goings- 
on  of  human  life  are  suddenly  resumed.  All  action 
in  any  direction  is  best  expounded,  measured,  and  made 
apprehensible,  by  reaction.  Now  apply  this  to  the  case 
in  Macbeth.  Here,  as  I  have  said,  the  retiring  of  the 
human  heart,  and  the  entrance  of  the  fiendish  heart, 
was  to  be  expressed  and  made  sensible.  Another 
world  has  stept  in ;  and  the  murderers  are  taken  out 
of  the  region  of  human  things,  human  purposes,  human 
desu-es.  They  are  transfigured :  Lady  Macbeth  is 
'  unsexed  ;  '  Macbeth  has  forgot  that  he  was  born  of 
woman  ;  both  are  conformed  to  the  image  of  devils ; 
and  the  world  of  devils  is  suddenly  revealed.  But  how 
shall  this  be  conveyed  and  made  palpable  ?  In  order 
that  a  new  world  may  step  in,  this  world  must  for  a 
time  disappear.  The  murderers,  and  the  murder,  must 
>e  insulated  —  cut  ofi"  by  an  immeasurable  gulph  from 
-Sie  ordinary  tide  and  succession  of  human  afiairs  — 


MACBETH.  539 

locked  up  and  sequestered  in  some  deep  recess ;  we 
must  be  made  sensible  that  tbe  world  of  ordinary  life 
is  suddenly  arrested  —  laid  asleep  —  ti-anced  —  racked 
into  a  dread  armistice  ;  time  must  be  annihilated  ;  rela- 
tion to  things  without  abolished ;  and  all  must  pass 
Belf-"^vithdra^vn  into  a  deep  syncope  and  suspension  of 
earthly^passion.  Hence  it  is,  that  when  the  deed  is 
done,  when  the  work  of  dai'kness  is  perfect,  then  the 
world  of  darkness  passes  away  like  a  pageantry  in  the 
clouds  ;  the  knocking  at  the  gate  is  heard  ;  and  it  makes 
known  audibly  that  the  reaction  has  commenced  :  the 
human  has  made  its  reflux  upon  the  fiendish ;  the 
pulses  of  life  are  beginning  to  beat  again  ;  and  the  re- 
establishment  of  the  goings-on  of  the  world  in  which 
we  live,  first  makes  us  profoundly  sensible  of  the  awful  ' 
parenthesis  that  had  suspended  them. 

0,  mighty  poet !  Thy  works  are  not  as  those  of 
other  men,  simply  and  merely  great  works  of  art ;  but 
are  also  like  the  phenomena  of  nature,  like  the  sun 
and  the  sea,  the  stars  and  the  flowers,  —  like  frost  and 
snow,  rain  and  dew,  hail-storm  and  thunder,  which  are 
to  be  studied  with  entire  submission  of  our  own  fac- 
ulties, and  in  the  perfect  faith  that  in  them  there  can 
be  no  too  much  or  too  little,  nothing  useless  or  inert,  — 
but  that,  the  further  we  press  in  oiu*  discoveries,  the 
more  we  shall  see  proofs  of  ekesign  and  self-supporting 
arrangement  where  the  careless  eye  had  seen  nothing 
but  accident !  J  / 


NOTES 


Note  1.  Page  2. 
**Tke  whole  people  were  still  draped  professionally."—  For 
example,  physicians  never  appeared  without  the  insignia  of  their 
Balling  ;  clergymen  would  have  incurred  the  worst  suspicions  had 
they  gone  into  the  streets  without,  a  gown  and  bands.  Ladies» 
again,  universally  wore  masks,  as  the  sole  substitute  known  to 
our  ancestors  for  the  modern  parasol;  a  fact,  perhaps,  not  generaUy 
known. 

Note  2.    Page  17. 

The  five  acts  which  old  tradition  prescribed  as  binding  upon  the 
Greek  tragic  drama  cannot  always  be  marked  off  by  the  interrup- 
tions of  the  chorus.  In  the  HeracleidcB  of  Euripides  they  can. 
But  it  is  evident  that  these  acts  existed  for  the  sake  of  the  chorus, 
by  way  of  allowing  sufficient  openings  (both  as  to  number  and 
length)  for  the  choral  dances  ;  and  the  necessity  must  have  grown 
out  of  the  time  allowed  for  a  dramatic  representation,  and  origin- 
ally, therefore,  out  of  the  mere  accidental  convenience  prescribed 
by  the  social  usages  of  Athens.  The  rule,  therefore,  was  at  any 
i-ate  an  arbitrary  rule.  Purely  conventional  it  would  have  been, 
&nd  local,  had  it  even  grown  out  of  any  Attic  superstition  (as  we 
have  sometimes  thought  it  might)  as  to  the  number  of  the  choral 
dances.  But  most  probably  it  rested  upon  a  sort  of  convention, 
Which  Of  all  is  the  least  entitled  to  respect  or  translation  to  foreign 


542 


KOTES. 


Boils,  namely,  the  mere  local  arrangement  of  meals  and  sleeping 
hours  in  Athens  ;  which,  having  prescribed  a  limited  space  to 
the  whole  performance,  afterwards  left  this  space  to  be  distributed 
between  the  recitation  and  the  more  popular  parts,  addressed  to 
eye  and  ear  as  the  mob  of  Athens  should  insist.  Horace,  in  say- 
ing roundly,  as  a  sort  of  brutumfulmen,  "  JVon  quinto  brevior, 
non  sit  productior,  actufabulce,"  delivers  this  capricious  rule  in 
the  capricious  manner  which  becomes  it.  The  stet  pro  ratione 
voluntas  comes  forward  equally  in  the  substance  of  the  precept  and 
the  style  of  its  delivery. 

Note  3.    Page  21. 

Valckenaer,  in  his  immortal  series  of  comments  on  the  Phanissa 
of  Euripides,  notices  the  peculiar  spirit  and  tendency  of  the  innova- 
tions introduced  into  the  tragic  diction  bj'  this  youngest  of  the  great 
Athenian  dramatists.  These  innovations  ran  in  the  very  same  direc- 
tion as  those  of  Wordsworth  in  our  own  times  ;  to  say  this,  however, 
without  further  explanation,  considering  how  profoundly  the  views 
of  Wordsworth  in  this  matter  have  been  misunderstood,  would  simply 
be  —  to  mislead  the  English  reader  equally  as  to  Euripides.  Yet,  as 
we  should  be  sorry  to  discuss  so  great  a  theme  indirectly  and  in  a 
comer,  it  maj'  be  enough  for  the  present  to  remark  —  that  Euripides 
did  not  mean  to  tax  his  great  predecessors  ^schylus  and  Sophocles 
with  any  error  of  taste  in  the  cast  of  their  diction.  Having  their  pur- 
poses, they  chose  wisely.  But  he  felt  that  the  Athenian  tragedy  had 
two  functions  —  1,  to  impress  awe,  and  religious  terror;  2,  to  impress 
pity.  This  last  be  adopted  as  his  own  peculiar  function ;  and  with 
it  a  corresponding  diction  —  less  grand  (it  is  true)  and  stately,  but 
counterbalancing  this  loss  by  a  far  greater  power  of  pure  (sometimes 
we  may  say,  of  holy)  household  pathos.  Such  also  was  the  change 
wrought  by  Wordsworth. 

Note  4.    Page  22. 

Any  man,  who  has  at  all  studied  the  Greek  iambics,  must  well 
remember  those  forms  of  the  metre  which  are  used  in  a  cadence  at 
the  close  of  a  resounding  passage,  meant  to  express  a  full  pause, 
and  the  prodigious  difference  from  such  as  were  meant  for  weaker 
lines,  or  less  impressive  metrical  effects.  These  cadences,  with  their 
fiill  body  of  rhythmus,  are  never  reproduced  in  the  Latin  imitationa 
of  the  iambic  hexameter  :  nor  does  it  seem  within  the  compass  of 


NOTES. 


543 


Latin  metre  to  reach  such  effects :  though  otherwise,  and  especially 
by  the  dactylic  hexameter,  the  Latin  language  is  more  powerful 
than  the  Greek. 

Note  5.    Page  23. 

Viz.,  in  the  brief  Introduction  to  the  Samson  Agonistes,  and  in  a 
remarkable  passage  (taxed  not  unreasonably  with  bigotry  by  Words- 
worth) of  the  Paradise  Regained. 

Note  6.     Page  27. 

*  When  sown  ; '  as  it  has  been  repeatedly  ;  a  fact  which  some 
readers  may  not  be  aware  of. 

Note  7.     Page  29. 

Boileau,  it  is  true,  translated  Longinus.  But  there  goes  little 
Greek  to  that.  It  is  in  dealing  with  Attic  Greek,  and  Attic  potU, 
that  a  man  can  manifest  his  Grecian  skill. 

Note  8.     Page  31. 

•  Before  God  was  kno^vn  ; '  —  i.  e.  known  in  Greece. 

Note  9.    Page  .34. 

At  times,  I  say  pointedly,  the  Athenian  rather  than  the  Grecian 
tragedy,  in  order  to  keep  the  reader's  attention  awake  to  a  re- 
mark made  by  Paterculus,  —  viz.  That  although  Greece  coquet- 
tishly  welcomed  homage  to  herself,  as  generally  concerned  in  the 
Greek  literature,  in  reality  Athens  only  had  any  original  share  in 
the  drama,  or  in  the  oratory  of  Greece. 

Note  10.  Page  38. 

'  The  supreme  artist ; '  —  It  is  chiefly  by  comparison  with 
Euripides,  that  Sophocles  is  usually  crowned  with  the  laurels 
of  art.  But  there  is  some  danger  of  doing  wi-ong  to  the  truth  in 
Vk)  blindly  adhering  to  these  old  rulings  of  critical  courts.  The 
judgments  would  sometimes  be  reversed,  if  the  pleadings  were 
^fore  us.     There  were  blockheads  in  those  days.     Undoubtedly 


544  NOTES. 

it  is  past  denyiug  that  Euripides  at  times  betra,ys  marks  of  care- 
lessness in  the  structure  of  his  plots,  as  if  writing  too  mucli  in  a 
hurry  :  the  original  cast  of  the  fable  is  sometimes  not  happy,  and 
the  evolution  or  disentangling  is  too  precipitate.  It  is  easy  to  see 
that  he  would  have  remoulded  them  in  a  revised  edition,  or 
diaskeue  [(^/uazei;)/.]  On  the  other  hand,  I  remember  nothing  in 
the  Greek  drama  more  worthy  of  a  great  artist  than  parts  in  his 
Phoenissae.  Neither  is  he  the  eifeminately  tender,  or  merely 
pathetic  poet  that  some  people  imagine.  He  was  able  to  sweep 
all  the  chords  of  the  impassioned  spirit.  But  the  whole  of  thia 
subject  is  in  arrear :  it  is  in  fact  res  Integra,  almost  unbroken 
ground. 

Note  11.   Page  42. 

I  see  a  possible  screw  loose  at  this  point :  if  you  see  it,  reader, 
have  the  goodness  to  hold  your  tongue. 


Note  12.   Page  45. 

*  Athenian  Tlieatre  : '  —  Many  corrections  remain  to  be  made. 
Athens,  in  her  bloom,  was  about  as  big  as  Calcutta,  which  con- 
tained, forty  years  ago,  more  than  half  a  million  of  people  ;  or  as 
Naples,  which  (being  long  rated  at  three  hundred  thousand),  is 
now  known  to  contain  at  least  two  hundred  thousand  more.  The 
well  known  census  of  Demetrius  Phalereus  gave  twenty-one 
thousand  citizens.  Multiply  this  by  5,  or  4.^ ,  and  you  have  their 
families.  Add  ten  thousand,  multiplied  by  4^,  for  the  Metoikoi. 
Then  add  four  hundred  thousand  for  the  slaves  :  total,  about  five 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand.  But  upon  the  fluctuations  of  the 
Athenian  population  there  is  much  room  for  speculation.  And, 
quaere,  was  not  the  population  of  Alliens  greater  two  centuriea 
before  Demetrius,  in  the  days  of  Pericles  ? 


Note  13.  Page  47. 

Having  no  Sophocles  at  hand,  I  quote  from  memory,  not  pra 
tending  therefore  to  exactness  :  but  the  sense  is  what  I  state. 


NOTES.  545 

Note  14.   Page  49. 

fi^hose  version,  I  do  not  know.  But  one  unaccountable  error 
was  forced  on  one's  notice.  Thebes,  wliicli  by  Milton  and  by 
every  scholar  is  made  a  monosyllable,  is  here  made  a  dissyllable. 
But  Thebez,  the  dissyllable,  is  a  Syrian  city.  It  is  true  that 
Casaubon  deduces  from  a  Syriac  word  meaning  a  case  or  enclosure 
(a  theca),  the  name  of  Thebes,  whether  Boeotian  or  Egyptian.  It 
is  probable,  therefore,  that  Thebes  the  hundred-gated  of  Upper 
Egypt,  Thebes  the  seven-gated  of  Greece,  and  Thebes  of  Syria, 
had  all  one  origin  as  \'egards  the  name.  But  this  matters  not  ; 
it  is  the  English  name  that  we  are  concerned  with. 

Note  15.     Page  50. 

'  False : '  or  rather  inaccurate.  The  burlesque  was  not  on  the 
Antigone,  but  on  the  Medea  of  Euripides  ;  and  very  amusing. 

Note  16.     Page  58. 

But  in  this  instance,  perhaps,  distance  of  space,  combined  with 
the  unrivalled  grandeur  of  the  war,  was  felt  to  equiponderate  the 
distance  of  time,  Susa,  the  Persian  capital,  being  fourteen  hun- 
dred miles  from  Athens. 

Note  17.     Page  59. 

STffira  &'vK  ayaXuuTo:,  her  bosom  as  the  bosum  of  a  statue;  an 
expression  of  Euripides,  and  applied,  I  think,  to  Polyxena  at  the 
moment  of  her  sacrifice  on  the  tomb  of  Achilles,  as  the  bride  that 
was  being  married  to  him  at  the  moment  of  his  death. 

Note  18.     Page  59. 

Amongst  the  questions  which  occurred  to  me  as  requiring  an 
»nswer,  in  connection  with  this  revival,  was  one  with  regard  to 
ihe  comparative  fitness  of  the  Antigone  for  giving  a  representa^- 
tive  idea  of  the  Greek  stage.  I  am  of  opinion  that  it  was  the 
worst  choice  which  could  have  been  made  ;  and  ihr  the  very 
reason  which  no  doubt  governed  that  choice,  viz.  —  because  the 
austerity  of  the  tragic  passion  la  disfigured  by  a  love  epiaodfe 
Rousseau  in  his  letter  t.  U'Alembert  upon  his  article  Genet  i,  iq 
35 


546  KOTES. 

the  French  Encyclopcdie,  aska,  —  •  Qui  est-ce  qui  doute  que,  sur 
nos  theatres,  la  meilleure  piece  de  Sophocle  ne  tombdt  tout-a-platl^ 
A.nd  his  reason  (as  collected  from  other  passages)  is  —  because 
an  interest  derived  from  the  passion  of  sexual  love  can  rarely  be 
found  on  the  Greek  stage,  and  yet  cannot  be  dispensed  witli  on 
that  of  Paris.  But  why  was  it  so  rare  on  the  Greek  stage  ?  Net 
from  accident,  but  because  it  did  not  harmonize  with  the  prin- 
ciple of  that  stage,  and  its  vast  overhanging  gloom.  It  is  the 
greixt  infirmity  of  the  French,  and  connected  constitutionally  with 
the  gayety  of  their  temperament,  that  they  cannot  sympathize 
with  this  terrific  mode  of  grandeur.  We  can.  And  for  us  the 
choice  should  have  been  more  purely  and  severely  Grecian  ;  whilst 
the  slenderness  of  the  plot  in  any  Greek  tragedy,  would  require 
a  far  more  effective  support  from  tumultuous  movement  in  the 
chorus.  Even  the  French  are  not  uniformly  insensible  to  this 
Grecian  grandeur.  I  remember  that  Voltaire,  amongst  many 
just  remarks  on  the  Electra  of  Sophocles,  mixed  with  others  that 
are  not  just,  bitterly  condemns  this  demand  for  a  love  fable  on 
the  French  stage,  and  illustrates  its  extravagance  by  the  Fi-ench 
tragedy  on  the  same  subject,  of  Crebillon.  He  (in  default  of  any 
more  suitable  resource)  has  actually  made  Electra,  whose  char- 
acter on  the  Greek  stage  is  painfully  vindictive,  in  love  with  an 
imaginary  son  of  ^gisthus,  her  father's  murderer.  Something 
should  also  have  been  said  of  Mrs.  Leigh  Murray's  Ismene,  which 
was  very  effective  in  supporting  and  in  relieving  the  magnificent 
impression  of  Antigone.  I  ought  also  to  have  added  a  note  on 
the  scenic  mask,  and  the  common  notion  (not  authorized,  I  am 
satisfied,  by  the  practice  in  the  supreme  era  of  Pericles),  that  it 
exhibited  a  Janus  face,  the  windward  side  expressing  grief  or 
horror,  the  leeward  expressing  tranquillity.  Believe  it  not, 
reader.  But  on  this  and  other  points,  it  will  be  better  to  speak 
circumstantially,  in  a  separate  paper  on  the  Greek  drama,  as  8 
majestic  but  very  exclusive  and  almost,  if  one  may  say  so,  bigoted 
form  of  the  scenic  art 

Note  19.    Page  79. 

Bitson  was  the  most  litigious  of  attorneys  ;  the  leader  of  all  black- 
.etter  Uterature  ;  dreaded  equally  by  Bishop  Percy  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott ;  but  constantly  falling  into  error  through  pure  mulish  perverse- 
ness.  Of  Greek  he  knew  nothing.  In  Latin  he  was  self-taught,  and 
consequently  laid  himself  open  to  the  scoffs  of  scholara  better  taught 


V0TB8. 


547 


NOTB  20.    Page  84. 

This  obelus,  or  little  spit,  or  in  fact  dagger,  prefixed  to  a  word,  or 
verse,  or  paragraph,  indicated  that  it  might  consider  itself  stabbed, 
and  assassinated  forever. 

Note  21.    Page  91. 

Which  (to  borrow  Milton' s  grand  words  f  rom  "  Paradise  Regained  '* ) 
"  Thvmder'd  over  Greece 
To  Macedon  and  Artaxerxes'  throne." 

Note  32.    Page  92 

A  still  more  startling  (because  more  complex)  anagram  is  found  in 
the  words  Revolution  Frangaise ;  for  if  (as  was  said  in  1800,  after 
Marengo),  from  those  two  words,  involving  nineteen  letters,  you  sub- 
tract the  king's  veto  (viz.,  exactly  those  four  letters),  in  that  case 
there  will  remain  —  Un  Corse  lajinira. 

Note  23.    Page  95. 

For  instance,  the  Athenian  females,  even  when  mature  women, 
seemed  still  girls  in  their  graceful  slenderness;  they  were,  in  modern 
French  phrase,  sveltes.  But  the  Boeotian,  even  whilst  yet  young  girls, 
seemed  already  mature  women,  fully  developed. 

Note  24.    Page  95. 

From  the  expression  of  Phidiaca  manu — used  by  Horace — we  learn 
that  the  adjective,  derived  from  Phidias,  the  immortal  architect  and 
sculptor,  was  Phidiacus. 

Note  25.    Page  127. 

"  Sycophantic:"" — The  reader  must  remember  that  the  danger  was 
immiuent:  there  was  always  a  body  ready  to  be  bribed  into  forgery — 
viz.,  the  mercenary  rhapsodoi;  there  was  always  a  body  having  a 
deep  interest  of  family  ostentation  in  bribing  them  into  flattering 
interpolations.  And  standing  by  was  a  public  the  most  uncritical 
and  the  most  servile  to  literary  forgeries  (such  is  the  Letters  of  Pha- 
laris,  of  Themistocles,  &c.),  that  ever  can  have  existed. 

Note  26.    Page  129. 

"  Stilettoes:" — u  e.,  obelises,  or  places  his  autocratic  obelus  heton 
the  passage. 


54S 


NOTES. 


Note  27.    Page  130. 

The  first  words  of  the  "Iliad"  are,  MjixtK  aeiSe  ©ea — i.  e.,  Wrath 
ling  Goddess  of  Pelides. 

Note  28.    Page  131, 

I  have  repeatedU'  spoken  of  "publication'''  as  an  incident  to  which 
literary  works  were,  or  might  be,  liable  in  the  times  of  Solon  and 
Pisistratus;  that  is,  in  times  that  range  between  500  and  600  j'ears 
B.  c.  But,  as  very  many  readers — especially  female  readers — make 
no  distinction  between  the  act  of  printing  and  the  act  of  publication, 
there  are  few  who  will  not  be  perplexed  by  this  form  of  expression, 
as  supposing  that  neither  one  nor  the  other  was  an  advantage  physi- 
cally open  in  those  daj's  to  any  author  whatever.  Printing,  it  is  true, 
was  not;  but  for  a  very  different  reason  from  that  ordinarily  assigned 
— viz.,  that  it  had  not  been  discovered.  It  had  been  discovered  many 
times  over;  and  many  times  forgotten.  Paper  it  was,  cheap  paper 
(as  man}'  writers  have  noticed),  that  had  not  been  discovered  ;  which 
failing,  the  other  discoverj'  fell  back  constantly  into  oblivion.  This 
want  forced  the  art  of  printing  to  slumber  for  pretty  nearly  the  exact 
period  of  2000  years  from  the  era  of  Pisistratus.  But  that  want  did 
not  affect  the  power  of  publication,  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides, 
Aristophanes,  Menander,  were  all  published,  to  the  extent  of  many 
modern  editions,  on  the  majestic  stage  of  Athens;  published  to  myriads 
in  one  day ;  published  with  advantages  of  life-like  action,  noble  enun- 
ciation, and  impassioned  music.  No  modern  author,  except  Thomas 
a  Kempis,  has  ever  been  half  so  well  published.  The  Greek  orators 
on  the  Bema  were  published  to  more  than  all  the  citizens  of  Athens. 
And  some  2000  and  odd  years  later,  in  regal  London,  at  Whitehall, 
the  dramas  of  Shakspere  were  published  effectually  to  two  consec- 
utive Princes  of  Wales,  Henry  and  Charles,  with  royal  apparatus  of 
scenery  and  music. 

Note  29.    Page  137. 

Literally —  Whence  also  the  Homeridoe,  who  are  m  effect  the  singert 
(aoiSoi)  oj"  continuous  metrical  narratives  (i.  e.,  pairTtav,  iiittov),  do  for 
the  most  part  (to  ttoXa*)  derive  their  openings  (apxovrax). 

Note  30.    Page  139. 

It  will  be  observed  that  I  have  uniformly  assumed  the  chronologic 
date  of  Homer  as  1000  years  b.  c.  Among  the  reasons  for  this,  some 
%re  so  transcendent  that  it  would  not  have  been  worth  while  to  detain 


NOTES.  549 

Jie  reader  upon  minute  grounds  of  approximation  to  that  date.  One 
ground  is  sufficient :  Lycurgus,  the  Spartan  lawgiver,  seems  accu- 
ratelj  placed  about  800  years  b.  c.  Now,  if  at  that  era  Lycurgus 
naturalizes  the  "Iliad"  as  a  great  educational  power  in  Sparta  (led 
to  this,  no  doubt,  by  gratitude  for  Homer's  glorification  of  so  many 
cities  in  the  Peloponnesus),  then — because  one  main  reason  for  this 
must  have  been  the  venerable  antiquity  of  Homer — it  is  impossible 
to  assign  him  less  at  that  time  than  200  years  of  duration.  An 
antiquity  that  was  already  venerable  in  the  year  800  b.  c.  would 
Itrgue,  at  the  very  least,  a  natal  origin  for  the  poet  (if  not  for  the 
poem)  of  1000  b.  c. 

Note  31.     Page  156. 

"Two  centuries:" — i.  e.,  the  supposed  interval  between  Troy  and 
Homer. 

Note  32.     Page  164. 

In  particular,  by  an  Eton  boy  about  the  beginning  of  this  century, 
known  extensively  as  Homeric  Wright. 

Note  33.    Page  184, 

•  Yankee  names. '  —  Foreigners  in  America  subject  themselves 
to  a  perpetual  misinterpretation  by  misapplying  this  term. 
♦  Yankee,^  in  the  American  use,  does  not  mean  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States  as  opposed  to  a  foreigner,  but  a  citizen  of  the 
Northern  New  England  States  (Massachusetts,  Connecticut, 
&c.)  opposed  to  a  Virginian,  a  Kentuckian,  &c. 

Note  34.  Page  187. 

•  An  increasing  class  ;  '  but  not  in  France.  —  It  is  a  most 
remarkable  moral  phenomenon  in  the  social  condition  of  that 
nation,  and  one  which  speaks  a  volume  as  to  the  lower  tone  of 
female  dignity,  that  unmarried  women,  at  the  age  which  amongst 
us  obtains  the  insulting  name  of  old  maids,  are  almost  unknown. 
What  shocking  sacrifices  of  sexual  honor  does  this  one  fact 
argue  ? 

Note  35.    Page  212. 

This  is  a  most  instructive  fact,  and  it  is  another  fact  not  less 
instructive,  that  law3'ers  in  most  parts  of  Christendom,  I  believe, 
»ertainlj'  wherever  they  are  wide  awake  professionally,  tolerate  no 


;)50  iroTES. 

puncfuation.  But  why?  Are  }awyers  not  sensible  to  the  luminous 
effect  from  a  point  happily  placed?  Yes,  they  are  sensible;  but  also 
I  hey  are  sensible  of  the  false  prejudicating  effect  from  a  punctuation 
managed  (as  too  generally  it  is)  carelessly  and  illogically.  Here  is 
the  brief  abstract  of  the  case.  All  punctuation  narrows  the  path, 
which  is  else  unlimited;  and  (%  narrowing  it)  may  chance  to  guide 
the  reader  into  the  right  groove  amongst  several  that  are  not  right. 
But  also  punctuation  has  the  effect  very  often  (and  almost  always 
has  the  power)  of  biassing  and  predetermining  the  reader  to  an  erro- 
neous choice  of  meaning.  Better,  therefore,  no  guide  at  all  than  one 
which  is  likely  enough  to  lead  astray,  and  which  must  always  be 
suspected  and  mistrusted,  inasmuch  as  very  nearly  always  it  has  the 
power  to  lead  astray. 

Note  36.  Page  218, 

•  JVo  subject. '  —  If  he  had  a  subject,  what  was  it  ?  As  to  the 
great  and  sole  doctrines  of  Islam  —  the  unity  of  God,  and  the 
mission  of  Mahomet  as  his  chief  prophet,  (i.  e.  not  vaticinator, 
but  interpreter,)  —  that  must  be  presumed  known  to  every 
man  in  a  Mussulman  army,  since  otherwise  he  could  not  have 
been  admitted  into  the  army.  But  these  doctrines  might 
require  expansion,  or  at  least  evidence  ?  Not  at  all  ;  the 
Mussulman  believes  them  incapable  of  either.  But  at  least 
the  Cahph  might  mount  the  pulpit,  in  order  to  urge  the  pri- 
mary duty  of  propagating  the  true  faith  ?  No  ;  it  was  not  the 
primary  duty  ;  it  was  a  secondary  duty  ;  else  there  would  have 
been  no  option  allowed  —  tribute,  death,  or  conversion.  Well, 
then,  the  Caliph  might  ascend  the  pulpit,  for  the  purpose  of  en- 
forcing a  secondary  duty  ?  No,  he  could  not ;  because  that  was 
no  duty  of  time  or  place  ;  it  was  a  postulate  of  the  conscience  at 
all  times  alike  ;  and  needed  no  argument  or  illustration.  Why 
then,  what  ivas  it  that  the  Caliph  talked  about  ?  It  was  this  :  — 
He  praised  the  man  who  had  cut  most  throats  ;  he  pronounced 
the  funeral  panegyric  of  him  who  had  his  own  throat  cut  under 
the  banners  of  the  Prophet ;  he  explained  the  prudential  merits 
of  the  next  movement  or  of  the  next  campaign.  In  fact,  he 
did  precisely  what  Pericles  did  —  what  Scipio  did  —  what 
Otesar  did  ;  what  it  was  a  regular  part  of  the  Roman  Impera- 
tor's  commission  to  do,  both  before  a  battle  and  after  a  battle, 
and,  generally,  under  any  circumstances  which  make  an  ex- 
planation necessary.     What  is  now  done  in  '  general  orders,' 


KOTEfl. 


551 


tras  then  committed  to  a  viva  voce  communication.  Trifling 
communications  probably  devolved  on  the  six  centurions  of 
each  cohort  (or  regiment) ;  graver  communications  were  reserved 
to  the  Imperator,  surrounded  by  his  stall".  Why  we  should  mis- 
lead the  student  by  calling  this  solemnity  of  addressing  an  army 
from  a  tribunal,  or  suggestus,  by  the  irrelevant  name  of  preach- 
ing from  a  pulpit,  can  only  be  understood  by  those  who  perceive 
the  false  view  taken  of  the  Mahometan  faith  and  its  relation  to 
the  human  mind.  It  was  certainly  a  poor  plagiarism  from  the 
Judaic  and  the  Christian  creeds;  but  it  did  not  rise  so  high  as 
to  conceive  of  any  truth  that  needed  or  that  admitted  intellectual 
development,  or  that  was  susceptible  of  exposition  and  argu- 
ment. However,  if  we  will  have  it  that  the  Caliph  preached, 
then  did  his  lieutenant  say  Amen.  If  Omar  was  a  parson,  then 
certainly  Caled  was  his  clerk. 

Note  37.   Page  255. 

Paterculus,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  composing  a  pecu- 
liar form  of  history,  and,  therefore,  under  a  peculiar  law  of 
composition.  It  was  designed  for  a  rapid  survey  of  many 
ages,  within  a  very  narrow  compass,  and  unavoidably  pitched 
its  scale  of  abstraction  very  high.  This  justified  a  rhetorical, 
almost  a  poetic,  form  of  expression  ;  for  in  such  a  mode  of 
writing,  whether  a  writer  seeks  that  effect  or  not,  the  abrupt 
and  almost  lyrical  transitions,  the  startling  leaps  over  vast 
gulfs  of  time  and  action,  already  have  the  effect  of  impassioned 
composition.  Hence,  by  an  instinct,  he  becomes  rhetorical  : 
and  the  natural  character  of  his  rhetoric,  its  pointed  condensa- 
tion, often  makes  him  obscure  at  first  sight.  We  therefore,  for 
the  merely  English  reader  have  a  little  expanded  or  at  least 
brought  out  his  meaning.  But  foi  the  Latin  reader,  who  will 
unjoy  his  elliptical  energy,  we  hav(,  sometimes  added  the  origi- 
nal words. 

Note  38.    Page  263. 

*  The  Roma?i  aid-de-camp^s.'  — Excuse,  reader,  this  modern 
(>hrase  :  by  what  other  is  it  possible  to  express  the  relation  to 
Tiberius,  and  the  military  ofiice  about  his  person,  which  Pater- 
culus held  on  the  German  frontier  ?  In  the  lU-Ith  chapter 
\£  his  second  book  he  says  —  ^Hoctempus  me,  functum  ante 


552  KOTKS. 

'ribwialu  castrorum,  Tib.  Ccesaris  militem  fecit ;  ^  which  in 
our  version  is  — '  This  epoch  placed  me,  who  had  previously 
discharged  the  duties  of  camp-marshal,  upon  the  staff  of 
Caesar.'  And  he  goes  on  to  say,  that,  having  been  made  a 
brigadier-general  of  cavalry  (ala  prcefectus)  under  a  commission 
which  dated  from  the  very  day  of  Caesar's  adoption  into  the 
Imperial  house  and  the  prospect  of  succession,  so  that  the  two 
acts  of  grace  ran  concurrently  —  thenceforwards  '  per  annos 
continuous  IX.  prsefectus  aut  legatus,  spectator,  et  pro  captu 
mediocritatis  mea,  adjutor  fui '  —  or,  as  we  beg  to  translate 
'  through  a  period  of  nine  consecutive  years  from  this  date,  I 
a'.ted  either  as  military  lieutenant  to  Caesar,  or  as  ministerial 
secretary,'  [such  we  hold  to  be  the  true  virtual  equivalent  of 
prafectus  —  i.  e.  speaking  fully  of  prcefectus  prcEtorio,]  'acting 
simultaneously  as  inspector  of  the  public  works,'  [bridges  and 
vast  fortifications  on  the  north-east  German  frontier,]  '  and 
(to  the  best  capacity  of  my  slender  faculties)  as  his  personal 
aid-de-camp.'  Possibly  the  reader  may  choose  to  give  a  less 
confined  or  professional  meaning  to  the  word  adjutor.  But,  in 
apology,  we  muat  suggest  two  cautions  to  him  :  1st,  That  else- 
where, Paterculus  does  certainly  apply  the  term  as  a  military 
designation,  bearing  a  known  techical  meaning  ;  and,  2d,  That 
this  word  adjutor,  in  other  non-military  uses,  as  for  instance  on 
the  stage,  had  none  but  a  technical  meaning. 

Note  29.  Page  264. 
This  is  too  much  to  allow  for  a  generation  in  those  days, 
when  the  average  duration  of  life  was  much  less  than  at 
present  ;  but,  as  an  exceedingly  convenient  allowance  (since 
itirice  o3i  is  just  equal  to  a  century),  it  may  be  allowedly  used 
In  all  cases  not  directly  bearing  on  technical  questions  of  civil 
economy.  Meantime,  as  we  love  to  suppose  ourselves  in  all 
cases  as  speaking  virginibus  puerisque,  who,  though  reading  no 
man's  paper  throughout,  may  yet  often  read  a  page  or  a  para- 
graph of  every  man's  —  we,  for  the  chance  of  catching  their 
eye  in  a  case  where  they  may  really  gain  in  two  minutes  an 
ineradicable  conspectus  of  the  Greek  literature,  (and  for  tho 
sake  of  ignorant  people  universally,  whose  interests  we  hold 
sacred.)  add  a  brief  explanation  of  what  is  meant  by  a  gen- 
'lation.     Is  it  meant  or  imagined  —  that,  in  so  narrow  a  com- 


VOTKS. 


5d3 


pass  as  33  years  +  4  montts  the  whole  population  of  a  city,  or 
A  people,  could  have  died  off?  By  no  means:  not  under  the 
lowest  value  of  human  life.  What  ia  meant  is  —  that  a  number 
equal  to  the  whole  population  will  have  died  :  not  X,  the  actual 
population,  but  a  number  equal  to  X.  Suppose  the  population 
of  Paris  900,000.  Then,  in  the  time  allowed  for  one  generation, 
900,000  will  have  died  :  but  then,  to  make  up  that  number, 
there  will  be  300,000  furnished,  not  by  the  people  now  existing, 
but  by  the  people  who  will  be  born  in  the  course  of  the  thirty- 
three  years.  And  thus  the  balloting  for  death  falls  only  upon 
two  out  of  three,  whom  at  first  sight  it  appears  to  hit.  It  falls 
not  exclusively  upon  X,  but  upon  X+Y  :  this  latter  quality 
Y  being  a  quantity  flowing  concurrently  with  the  lapse  of  the 
generation.  Obvious  as  this  explanation  is,  and  almost  child- 
ish, to  every  man  who  has  even  a  tincture  of  political  arithme- 
tic, it  is  so  far  from  being  generally  obvious  — that,  out  of  every 
thousand  who  will  be  interested  in  learning  the  earliest  revolu- 
tions of  literature,  there  will  not  be  as  many  as  seven  who 
will  know,  even  conjecturally,  what  is  meant  by  a  generation. 
Besides  infinite  other  blunders  and  equivocations,  many  use  an 
age  and  a  generation  as  synonymous,  whilst  by  siecle  the 
French  uniformly  mean  a  ceiitury. 

Note  40.  Page  267. 
The  oddest  feature  in  so  odd  a  business  was  —  that  Augustus 
committed  this  castigation  of  bad  poets  to  the  police.  Bat 
whence  the  police  were  to  draw  the  skill  for  distinguishing 
between  good  poets  and  bad  is  not  explained.  The  poets 
must  have  found  their  weak  minds  somewhat  astonished  by  the 
sentences  of  these  reviewers  —  sitting  like  our  Justices  in  Quar- 
ter Sessions  —  and  deciding,  perhaps,  very  much  in  the  same 
terms  ;  treating  an  Ode,  if  it  were  too  martial,  as  a  breach  of 
the  peace  ;  directing  an  epic  poet  to  find  security  for  his  good 
behavior  during  the  next  two  years  ;  and  for  the  writers  of  Epi- 
thaliimia  on  imperial  marriages,  ordering  them  '  to  be  privately 
Whipped  and  discharged.'  The  whole  aflair  is  the  more  singular 
|,s  coming  from  one  who  carried  his  cifUliias,  or  show  of  popular 
panners,  even  to  affectation.  Power  without  the  invidious  exte- 
rior of  power  was  the  object  of  his  life.     Ovid  seems  to  have 


&54  NOTES. 

aoticed  his  inconsistency  in  this  instance  by  reminding  him, 
that  even  Jupiter  did  not  disdain  to  furnish  a  te  me  laudibui 
ipso  jure* 

Note  41.   Page  268. 

'  Phidias : '  that  he  was  as  much  of  a  creative  power  as  the 
rest  of  his  great  contemporaries,  that  he  did  not  merely  take 
up  or  pursue  a  career  already  opened  by  others,  is  pretty  clear 
from  the  state  of  Athens,  and  of  the  forty  marble  quarries  which 
he  began  to  lay  under  contribution.  The  quarries  were  previously 
unopened  ;  the  city  was  without  architectural  splendor. 

Note  42.   Page  271. 

'Officers  and  savans.''  —  Ctesias  held  the  latter  character, 
Xenophon  united  both,  in  the  earlier  expedition.  These  were 
friends  of  Isocrates.  In  the  latter  expedition,  the  difficulty 
would  have  been  to  find  the  man,  whether  officer  or  savant, 
who  was  not  the  friend  of  Isocrates.  Old  age,  such  as  his,  was  a 
very  rare  thing  in  Greece  —  a  fact  which  is  evident  from  the 
Greek  work  surviving  on  the  subject  of  Macrobiotics  :  few  cases 
occur  beyond  seventy.  This  accident,  therefore,  of  length  in 
Isocrates,  must  have  made  him  already  one  of  the  standing  lions 
in  Athens  for  the  last  twenty-six  years  of  his  life  ;  while,  for 
the  last  seventy,  his  professorship  of  rhetoric  must  have 
brought  him  into  connection  with  every  great  family  in  Greece. 
One  thing  puzzles  us,  what  he  did  with  his  money,  for  he  must 
have  made  a  great  deal.  He  had  two  prices  ;  but  he  charged 
high  to  those  who  could  aflford  it  ;  and  why  not  ?  people  are  not 
to  learn  Greek  for  nothing.  Yet,  being  a  teetotaller  and  a  cow- 
ard, how  could  he  spend  his  money  ?  That  question  is  vexatious. 
However,  this  one  possibility  in  the  long  man's  life  will  forever 
jaake  him  interesting  ;  he  might,  and  it  is  even  probable  that  he 
might,  have  seen  Xenophon  (itsmount  from  some  horse  which  he 
had  stolen  at  Trebisond  on  his  return  from  the  Persian  expedi- 
tion ;  and  he  might  have  seen  Alexander  mount  for  Chaeronea. 
Alexander  was  present  at  that  battle,  and  personally  joined  in  a 
charge  of  cavah-y.  It  is  not  impossible  that  he  may  have  ridden 
Bucephalus. 


KoiES.  555 

Note  43.     Page  272. 

•  Is  exalted.'  —  The  logic  of  Gibbon  may  seem  defective.  Why 
ihould  it  exalt  our  sense  of  human  dignity  —  that  Isocrates  waa 
the  youthful  companion  of  Plato  or  Euripides,  and  the  aged  com- 
panion of  Demosthenes  ?  It  ought,  therefore,  to  be  mentioned, 
that,  in  the  sentence  preceding,  he  had  spoken  of  Athens  as  a 
city  that  '  condensed,  within  the  period  of  a  single  life,  the 
genius  of  ages  and  millions.'  The  condensation  is  the  measure 
of  the  dignity  ;  and  Isocrates,  as  the  '  single  life  '  alluded  to,  is 
the  measure  of  the  condensation.  That  is  the  logic.  By  the  vray, 
Gibbon  ought  always  to  be  cited  by  the  chapter  —  the  page  and 
Tolume  of  course  evanesce  with  many  forms  of  publication,  whilst 
the  chapter  is  always  available  ;  and.  in  the  commonest  form  of 
twelve  volumes,  becomes  useful  in  a  second  function,  as  a  guide 
to  the  particular  volume  ;  for  six  chapters,  with  hardly  any  ex- 
ception, {if  any,)  are  thi-own  into  each  volume.  Consequently, 
the  40th  chapter,  standing  in  the  seventh  series  of  sixes,  indi- 
cates the  seventh  volume. 

Note  44.     Page  273. 

Excepting  fragmentary  writers,  and  the  contributors  from 
various  ages  to  the  Greek  Anthologies,  (which,  however,  next 
after  the  scenic  literature,  offer  the  most  interesting  expressions 
of  Greek  household  feeling,)  we  ai-e  not  aware  of  having  omitted 
in  this  rapid  review  any  one  name  that  could  be  fancied  to 
be  a  weighty  name,  excepting  that  of  Lycophron.  Of  hira  we  will 
say  a  word  or  two  :  —  The  work,  by  which  he  is  known,  is  a 
monologue  or  dramatic  scene  from  the  mouth  of  one  single 
speaker  ;  this  speaker  is  Cassandra,  the  prophetic  daughter  of 
Priam.  In  about  one  thousand  five  hundred  Iambic  lines  (the 
ordinary  length  of  a.  Greek  tragedy),  she  pom-s  forth  a  dark 
prophecy  with  respect  to  all  the  heroes  engaged  in  the  Trojan 
war,  typifying  their  various  unhappy  catastrophes  by  symbolical 
images,  which  would  naturally  be  intelligible  enough  to  us  who 
tnow  their  several  histories,  but  which  (from  the  p:irticular 
eeleciion  of  accidents  or  circumstances  used  for  the  designation 
|f  the  persons)  read  like  riddles  without  the  aid  of  a  commenta- 
tor.   This  prophetic  gloom,  and  the  impassioned  character  of  th« 


556  NOTES. 

many  woes  arising  notoriously  to  the  conquerors  as  well  as  the 
conquered  in  the  sequel  of  the  memorable  war,  give  a  coloring  of 
dark  power  to  the  Cassandra  of  Lycophron.  Else  we  confess  to  the 
fact  of  not  having  examined  the  poem  attentively.  We  read  it  in 
the  year  1809,  having  been  told  that  it  was  the  most  difficult 
book  in  the  Greek  language.  This  is  the  popular  impression,  but 
a  very  false  one.  It  is  not  difficult  at  all  as  respects  the  lan- 
guage (allowing  for  a  few  peculiar  Lycophrontic  words)  :  the 
difficulty  lies  in  the  allusions,  which  are  intentionally  obscure. 

Note  45.     Page  276. 

•  JVot  easily  met  with.'  —  From  Germany  we  have  seen  reprints 
of  some  eight  or  nine  ;  but  once  only,  so  far  as  our  bibliography 
extends,  were  the  whole  body  published  collectively.  This  waa 
at  the  Aldine  press  in  Venice,  more  than  three  centuries  ago. 
Such  an  interval,  and  so  solitary  a  publication,  sufficiently  ex- 
plain the  non-familiarity  of  modern  scholars  with  this  section  of 
Greek  literature. 

Note  46.     Page  285. 

People  will  here  remind  us  that  Aristotle  was  half  a  foreigner, 
being  born  at  Stagyra  in  Macedon.  Ay,  but  amongst  Athenian 
emigrants,  and  of  an  Athenian  father.  His  mother,  we  think, 
was  Thracian.  The  crossing  of  races  almost  uniformly  terminates 
in  producing  splendor,  at  any  rate  energy,  of  intellect.  If  the 
roll  of  great  men,  or  at  least  of  energetic  men,  in  Christendom, 
were  carefully  examined,  it  would  astonish  us  to  observe  how 
many  have  been  the  children  of  mixed  marriages  ;  i.  e.  of  alli- 
ances between  two  bloods  as  to  nation,  although  the  races  might 
originally  have  been  the  same. 

Note  46.    Page  286. 

It  is  well  to  give  unity  to  our  grandest  remembrances,  by  con- 
necting them,  as  many  as  can  be,  with  the  same  centre  Pericles 
died  in  the  year  42'J  B.  C.  Supposing  his  age  to  be  fifty- 
six,  he  would  then  be  born  about  485  B.  C,  that  is,  ti-ve  yeors 
after  the  first  Persian  invasion  under  Darius,  five  years  before 
the  second  under  Xerxes. 


NOTES.  567 


Note  48.     Pagt  310. 

With  respect  to  the  word  '  demagogues,'  as  a  technical  desig- 
nation for  the  political  orators  and  partisans  at  Athens,  (other- 
wise called  ui  nnooTuiui,  those  who  headed  any  movement,)  it 
is  singular  that  so  accurate  a  Greek  scholar  as  Henry  Stephens 
should  have  supposed  linguas  promptas  ad  plebem.  co acitandum 
(an  expression  of  Livy's)  potius  loir  th^uayvtYt-'^r  fuisse  qua/n  twv 
^ijTO}Qu!v  ;  as  if  the  demagogues  were  a  separate  class  from  the 
popular  orators.  But,  says  Valckenaer,  the  relation  is  soon 
stated  :  Not  all  the  Athenian  orators  were  demagogues  ;  but  all 
the  demagogues  were  in  fact,  and  technically  were  called,  thp 
Orators. 

Note  49.    Page  316. 

It  is  ludicrous  to  see  the  perplexity  of  some  translators  and 
commentators  of  the  Rhetoric,  who,  having  read  it  under  a  false 
point  of  view,  and  understood  it  in  the  sense  of  Aristotle's  own 
deliberate  judgment  on  the  truth,  labor  to  defend  it  on  that  foot- 
ing.     On  its  real  footing  it  needs  no  defence. 

Note  50.    Page  317. 

It  stands  at  p.  227  of  Jacobi  Facciolati  Orationis  XII., 
Acroases,  Sfc.  Patavii,  1729.  This  is  the  second  Italian  edition, 
and  was  printed  at  the  University  Press. 

Note  51.    Page  318. 

Upon  an  innovation  of  such  magnitude,  and  which  will  be  so 
Btartling  to  scholars,  it  is  but  feir  that  Facciolati  should  have  the 
benefit  of  all  his  own  arguments  :  and  we  have  therefore  resolved 
to  condense  them.  1.  He  begins  with  that  very  passage  (or  one 
of  them)  on  which  the  received  idea  of  the  enthymeme  most 
relies  ;  and  from  this  he  derives  an  argument  for  the  new  idea. 
The  passage  is  to  this  effect,  that  the  enthymeme  is  composed 
ix  7io/iJ(.a>cig  iXaTJovwv  i/  i:  wy  6  nvi-Xoyioinug  —  i.  e.  frequently 
ipnsists  of  fewer  parts  than  the  syllogism.  Frequently  !  What 
^gic  is  there  in  that  1     Can  it  be  imagined,  that  so  rigorous  a 


5J8  NOTES. 

logician  as  Aristotle  would  notice,  as  a  circumstance  of  freqnent 
occurrence  in  an  enthymeme,  what,  by  the  received  doctrine, 
should  be  its  mere  essence  and  diiferential  principle  ?  To  say 
that  this  happens  fi-equently,  is  to  say,  by  implication,  that 
sometimes  it  does  iiot  happen  —  i.  e.  that  it  is  an  accident,  and 
no  part  of  the  definition,  since  it  may  thus  confessedly  be  absent, 
salva  ratione  conceptus  2.  Waiving  this  argument,  and  sup- 
posing tlie  suppression  of  one  proposition  to  be  even  universal  ia 
the  enthymeme,  still  it  would  be  an  impertinent  circumstance, 
and  (philosophically  speaking)  an  accident.  Could  it  be  tolera- 
ted, that  a  great  systematic  distinction  (for  such  it  is  in  Ai-is- 
totle)  should  rest  upon  a  mere  abbreviation  of  convenience  ? 
'  Quasi  vero  argumentandi  ratio  et  natura  varietur,  cum  brevius 
eflfertur  ; '  whereas  Aristotle  himself  tells  us,  that  '  ov  noug  rov 
i'i.u)  Xuyor  );  i.Tot^f /;(C,  alXa  nQoc  Tov  iv  T>i  if'r/'i.'  3.  From  a 
particular  passage  in  the  2d  book  of  the  Prior  Analytics,  (chap. 
27,)  generally  interpreted  in  a  way  to  favor  the  existing  account 
of  the  enthymeme,  after  first  of  all  showing,  that  under  a  more 
accurate  construction  it  is  incompatible  with  that  account,  whilst 
it  is  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  new  one,  Facciolati  deduces  an 
explanation  of  that  accidental  peculiarity  in  the  enthymeme, 
which  has  attracted  such  undue  attention  as  to  eclipse  its  true 
characteristic  :  the  peculiarity,  we  mean,  of  being  entitled  (though 
not,_as  the  common  idea  is,  required)  to  suppress  one  proposi 
tion.  So  much  we  shall  here  anticipate,  as  to  say,  that  this 
privilege  arises  out  of  the  peculiar  matter  of  the  enthymeme, 
which  fitted  it  for  the  purposes  of  the  rhetorician  ;  and  these 
purposes  being  loose  and  popular,  brought  with  them  proportion- 
able indulgences  ;  whereas  the  syllogism,  technically  so  called, 
employing  a  severer  matter,  belonged  peculiarly  to  the  dialecti- 
cian, or  philosophic  disputant,  whose  purposes  being  rigorous 
and  scientific,  imposed  much  closer  restrictions  ;  and  one  of  these 
was,  that  he  should  in  no  case  suppress  any  proposition,  however 
obvious,  but  should  formally  enunciate  all  :  just  as  in  the  deba- 
ting schools  of  later  ages  it  has  always  been  the  rule,  that  before 
urging  his  objection,  the  opponent  should  repeat  the  respondent's 
syllogism.  Hence,  although  the  rhetorician  naturally  used  his 
privilege,  and  enthymemes  were  in  fact  generally  shorn  of  ono 
Vroposition,  (and  vice  versa  with  respect  to  syllogisms  in  th« 


KOTBS.  559 

strict  philosophic  sense,)  yet  was  all  this  a  mere  effect  of  usage 
an  J  accident  ;  and  it  was  very  possible  for  an  enthymeme  to  have 
its  full  complement  of  parts,  whUst  a  syllogism  might  be  defec- 
tive in  the  very  way  which  is  falsely  supposed  to  be  of  the 
essence  of  an  enthymeme.  4.  He  derives  an  argument  from  au 
inconsistency  with  which  Aristotle  has  been  thought  chargeable 
under  the  old  idea  of  the  enthymeme.  and  with  which  Gassendi 
has  in  f^ict  charged  him.*  5.  He  meets  and  rebuts  the  force  of  a 
principal  argument  in  favor  of  the  enthymeme  as  commonly  un- 
derstood, viz.  that,  in  a  particular  part  of  the  Prior  Analytics, 
the  enthymeme  is  called  nv/Jioymuog  uTf/i;s  —  an  imperfect  syl- 
logism, which  word  the  commentators  generally  expound  by 
*  mutilus  atque  imminutus.^  Here  he  uses  the  assistance  of  the 
excellent  J.  Pace,  whom  he  justly  describes  as  '  virum  Graecarum 
litterarum  jeritissimum,  philosophum  in  primis  bonum,  et  Aris- 
totelis  interpretum  quot  sunt,  quotque  fuerunt,  quotque  futuri 
sunt,  longe  prsestantissimum.'  This  admirable  commentator,  so 
indispensable  to  all  who  would  study  the  Organon  and  the  TZs^i 
Wv/y^i;,  had  himself  originally  started  that  hypothesis  which  we 
are  now  reporting,  as  long  afterwards  adopted  and  improved  by 
Facciolati.  Considering  the  unrivalled  qualifications  of  Pace, 
this  of  itself  is  a  great  argument  on  our  side.  The  objection 
before  us,  from  the  word  <iTfA(,;,  Pace  disposes  of  briefly  and 
conclusively  :  firsty  he  says,  that  the  word  is  wanting  in  four 
MSS.  ;  and  he  has  nc  doubt  himself  '  quin  ex  glossemate  irrep- 
serit  in  contextum  : '  secondly,  the  Latin  translators  and  school- 
men, as  Agricola  and  many  others,  take  no  notice  of  this  word  in 
their  versions  and  commentaries  :  thirdly,  the  Greek  commenta- 
tors, such  as  Joannes  Grammaticus  and  Alexander  Aphrodisiensis, 
clearly  had  no  knowledge  of  any  such  use  of  the  word  enthymeme, 
as  that  which  has  prevailed  in  later  times  ;  which  is  plain  from 
this,  that  wherever  they  have  occasion  to  speak  of  a  syllogism 
wanting  one  of  its  members,  they  do  not  in  any  instance  call  it 
an  enthymeme,  but  a  ovXXuYintioe  utnoXi^uiiaTov. 

*  However,  as  in  reality  the  whole  case  was  one  of  mere  misapprehension 
^i  the  p;irt  of  Gassemli,  ami  has,  in  fact,  nolliing  at  all  to  do  with  the  nature 
•f  the  enthymeme,  well  or  ill  understood,  Facciolati  takes  nothing  by  thit 
iviticular  argument,  which,  however,  we  have  retained,  to  make  our  analy 
tis  complete. 


5  GO  NOTES. 


Note  52.   Page  324. 

This,  added  to  the  style  and  quality  of  his  poems,  makes  it  the 
more  remarkable  that  Virgil  should  have  been  deemed  a  rhetori- 
cian. Yet  so  it  was.  Walsh  notices,  in  the  Life  of  Virgil,  which 
he  furnished  for  his  friend  Dryden's  Translation,  that  '  his  (Vir 
gil's)  rhetoric,  was  in  such  general  esteem,  that  lectures  were 
read  upon  it  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius,  and  the  subject  of  declama- 
tions taken  out  of  him.' 


Note  53.  Page  341. 

In  retracing  the  history  of  English  rhetoric,  it  may  strike  the 
reader  that  we  have  made  some  capital  omissions.  But  in  these 
he  will  find  we  have  been  governed  by  sufficient  reasons.  Shaks- 
peare  is  no  doubt  a  rhetorician,  majorum  gentium  ;  but  he  is  so 
much  more,  that  scarcely  an  instance  is  to  be  found  of  his  rheto- 
ric which  does  not  pass  by  fits  inio  a  higher  element  of  eloquence 
or  poetry.  The  first  and  the  last  acts,  for  instance,  of  The  Two 
JVoble  Kinsmen,  which,  in  point  of  composition,  is  perhaps  the 
most  superb  work  in  the  language,  and  beyond  all  doubt  from 
the  loom  of  Shakspeare,  would  have  been  the  most  gorgeous  rhet- 
oric, had  they  not  happened  to  be  something  far  better.  The 
supplications  of  the  widowed  Queens  to  Theseus,  the  invocations 
of  their  tutelar  divinities  by  Palamon  and  Ai'cite,  the  death  of 
Arcite,  &c.,  are  finished  in  a  more  elaborate  style  of  excellence 
than  any  other  almost  of  Shakspeare's  most  felicitous  scenes.  In 
their  first  intention,  they  were  perhaps  merely  rhetorical  ;  but 
the  furnace  of  composition  has  transmuted  their  substance.  In- 
deed, specimens  of  mere  rhetoric  would  be  better  sought  in  some 
of  the  other  great  dramatists,  who  are  under  a  less  fatal  neces- 
sity of  turning  everything  they  touch  into  the  pure  gold  of  poetry. 
Two  other  writers,  with  great  original  capacities  for  rhetoric,  we 
have  omitted  in  our  list  from  separate  considerations  :  we  mean 
Bir  Walter  Pi,aleigh  and  Lord  Bacon.  The  first  will  hardly  have 
been  missed  by  the  general  reader  ;  for  his  finest  passages  are 
iispersed  through  the  body  of  his  bulky  history,  and  are  touched 
tith  a  sadness  too  pathetic,  and  of  too  personal  a  growth,  to  fulfil 


NOTES.  561 

the  conditions  of  a  gay  rhetoric  as  an  art  rejoicing  in  its  own 
energies.  With  regard  to  Lord  Bacon,  the  case  is  different.  He 
had  great  advantages  for  rhetoric,  being  figurative  and  sensuous, 
(as  great  thinkers  must  always  be,)  and  laving  no  feelings  too 
profound,  or  of  a  nature  to  disturb  the  balance  of  a  pleasurable 
activity  ,  but  yet,  if  we  except  a  few  letters,  and  parts  of  a  few 
speeches,  he  never  comes  forward  as  a  rhetorician.  The  reason 
IS,  that  being  always  in  quest  of  absolute  truth,  he  contemplates 
all  subjects  —  not  through  the  rhetorical  fancy,  which  is  most 
excited  by  mere  seeming  resemblances,  and  such  as  can  only  sus- 
tain themselves  under  a  single  phasis,  but  through  the  philo- 
sophic fancy,  or  that  which  rests  upon  real  analogies-  Another 
unfavorable  circumstance,  arising  in  fact  out  of  the  pletlmric 
fulness  of  Lord  B.'s  mind,  is  the  short-hand  style  of  his  composi- 
tion, in  which  the  connections  are  seldom  fully  developed.  It 
was  the  lively  mot  of  a  great  modern  poet,  speaking  of  Lord  B.'s 
Essays,  '  that  they  are  not  plants  but  seeds. ' 

Note  54.   Page  362. 

We  may  take  the  opportunity  of  noticing  what  it  is  that  con- 
stitutes the  peculiar  and  characterizing  circumstance  in  Burke's 
manner  of  composition.  It  is  this,  —  that  under  his  treatment 
every  truth,  be  it  what  it  may,  every  thesis  of  a  sentence,  grows 
in  the  very  act  of  unfolding  it.  Take  any  sentence  you  please 
from  Dr.  Johnson,  suppose,  and  it  will  be  found  to  contain  a 
thought —  good  or  bad  —  fully  preconceived.  AVhereas,  in  Burke, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  preconception,  it  receives  a  new  de- 
termination or  inflection  at  every  clause  of  the  sentence.  Some 
3ollateral  adjunct  of  the  main  proposition,  some  temperament  or 
restraint,  some  oblique  glance  at  its  remote  affinities,  will  inva- 
riably be  found  to  attend  the  progress  of  his  sentences  —  like  the 
spray  from  a  waterfall,  or  the  scintillations  from  the  iron  under 
the  blacksmith's  hammer.  Hence,  wnilst  a  writer  of  Dr.  John- 
son's class  seems  only  to  look  back  upon  his  thoughts,  Burke 
ooks  forward  —  and  does  in  fact  advance  and  change  his  own 
station  concurrently  with  the  advance  of  the  sentences.  This 
\^culiarity  is  no  doubt  in  some  degree  due  to  the  habit  of  extern 
pore  speaking,  but  not  to  that  only. 

36 


562  NOTES. 


Note  55.   Page  366. 

The  following  illustration,  however,  from  Dr.  J.'s  critique  on 
Prior's  Solomon,  is  far  from  a  happy  one  :  '  He  had  infused  into 
it  much  knowledge  and  much  thought  ;  had  often  polished  it  to 
elegance,  dignified  it  with  splendor,  and  sometimes  heightened 
it  to  sublimity  ;  he  perceived  in  it  many  excellences,  and  did  not 
perceive  that  it  wanted  that,  without  which  all  others  are  of  small 
avail,  —  the  power  of  engaging  attention,  Skni  alluring  turi 
osity.^  The  parts  marked  in  italics  are  those  to  which  Dr.  W 
would  object  as  tautologic.  Yet  this  objection  can  hardly  be  sus 
tained  ;  the  ideas  are  all  sufficiently  discriminated  :  the  fault 
is,  that  they  are  applied  to  no  real  corresponding  differences  in 
Prior. 

Note  56.    Page  367. 

We  wish  that  in  so  critical  a  notice  of  an  effect  derived  from 
the  fortunate  position  of  a  single  word,  Dr.  W.  had  not  shocked 
our  ears  by  this  hideous  collision  of  a  double  '  is. ' 

Note  57.    Page  369. 

•  As  distinguished  from  prose.^  Here  is  one  of  the  many  in- 
stances in  which  a  false  answer  is  prepared  beforehand,  by 
falsely  shaping  the  question.  The  accessary  circumstance,  as 
'  distinguished  from  prose,'  already  prepares  a  false  answer  by 
the  very  terms  of  the  problem.  Poetry  cannot  be  distinguished 
from  prose  without  presupposing  the  whole  question  at  issue. 
Those  who  deny  that  metre  is  the  characteristic  distinction  of 
poetry,  deny,  by  implication,  that  prose  can  be  truly  opposed 
to  prose.  Some  have  imagined,  that  the  proper  opposition  was 
between  poetry  and  science  ;  but  suppose  that  this  is  an  imper- 
fect opposition,  and  suppose  even  that  there  is  no  adequate  oppo- 
sition, or  counterpole,  this  is  no  more  than  happens  in  many 
■ither  cases.  One  of  two  poles  is  often  without  a  name,  even 
where  the  idea  is  fully  assignable  in  analysis.  But  at  all  events 
{he  expression,  as  '  distinguished  from  prose,'  is  a  subtle  instance 
»f  a  petitio  principii. 


NOTES.  563 

NOTK  58.    Page  380. 

The  Romans  discover  something  apparently  of  the  same  tendency 
to  a  vague  economy  of  abstraction.  But  in  thein  it  is  merely  casual, 
and  dependent  on  accidental  ignorance.  Thus,  for  instance,  it  is 
ridiculous  to  render  the  Catullian  Passer  niece  puella  by  sparrow. 
As  well  suppose  Lesbia  to  have  fondled  a  pet  hedgehog.  Passer, 
or  passerculus,  means  any  little  bird  whatever.  The  sternness  of 
the  Roman  mind  disdained  to  linger  upon  petty  distinctions  ;  or  at 
least  until  the  ages  of  luxurious  refinement  had  paved  the  way  for 
intellectual  refinements.  So  again,  malum,  or  even  pomum,  does 
not  mean  an  apple,  but  any  whatever  of  the  larger  spherical  or 
spheroidical  fruits.  A  peach,  indeed,  was  described  differentially 
as  malum  Persicum;  an  apricot,  had  the  Romans  known  it,  would 
have  been  rendered  by  malum  apricum,  or  malum  apricatum ; 
but  an  apple  also,  had  it  been  mentioned  with  any  stress  of  oppo- 
sition or  pointed  distinction  attached  to  it,  would  have  been 
described  difierentially  as  malum  vuli/are  or  malum  domesticum~. 

Note  59.   Page  381. 

There  is  a  short  note  by  Gibbon  upon  this  word  ;  but  it  adds 
nothing  to  the  suggestions  which  every  thoughtful  person  will 
furnish  to  himself. 

Note  60.   Page  381. 

In  the  later  periods  of  Greek  literature,  namely,  at  and  after  the 
era  of  Pericles,  when  the  attention  had  been  long  pointed  to  lan- 
guage, and  a  more  fastidious  apprehension  had  been  directed  to  ita 
slighter  shades  of  difference,  the  term  ^'barbarous  "  was  applied 
apparently  to  uncouth  dialects  of  the  Greek  language  itself.  Thus 
in  the  Ajax  of  Sophocles,  Teucer  (though  certainly  talking  Greek) 
is  described  as  speaking  barbarously.  Perhaps,  however,  the  ex 
pression  might  bear  a  difierent  construction.  But  in  elder  periods 
it  seems  hardly  possible  that  the  term  barbarous  could  ever  have 
been  bo  used.  Sir  Edward  B.  Lytton,  in  his  "Athens,"  supposes 
4omer,  when  describing  the  Carians  by  this  term,  to  have  meant 
no  more  than  that  they  spoke  some  provincial  variety  of  the  Ionic 
Greek  :  but,  applied  to  an  age  of  so  little  refinement  as  the  Ho- 
tfierio,  I  should  scarcely  think  this  interpretation  admissible. 


664  NOTES. 

Note  61.    Page  384. 

Where,  by  the  way,  the  vocabulary  of  aesthetic  terms,  after  all 
the  labors  of  Ernesti  and  other  German  editors,  is  still  far  from 
being  understood.  In  particular,  the  word  facetus  is  so  far  from 
answering  to  its  usual  interpretation,  that  nostra  periculo  let  the 
reader  understand  it  as  precisely  what  the  French  mean  by  naive. 

Note  62.   Page  385. 

At  this  era,  when  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Shakspeare,  and  the  con- 
temporary dramatists,  when  Lord  Bacon,  Seldon,  Milton,  and 
many  of  the  leading  English  theologians  (Jewel,  Hooker,  Chilling- 
worth,  and  Jeremy  Taylor),  had  appeared  —  in  fact,  all  the  opti- 
mates  of  the  English  literature  —  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
French  literature  was  barely  beginning.  Montaigne  was  the  only 
deceased  author  of  eminence  ;  Corneille  was  the  only  living  author 
in  general  credit.  The  reader  may  urge  that  already,  in  the  times 
of  Catherine  de  Medici,  there  were  eminent  poets.  In  the  reign 
of  her  son  Charles  IX.  were  several  ;  and  in  the  reign  of  her  hus- 
band there  was  even  a  celebrated  Pleiad  of  poets.  But  these 
were  merely  court  poets  —  they  had  no  national  name  ;  and  were 
already  forgotten  in  the  days  of  Louis  XIII.  As  to  German  litera- 
ture, that  was  a  blank.  Germany  had  then  but  one  tolerable  poet, 
namely,  Opitz,  whom  some  people  (chiefly  his  countrymen)  honor 
with  the  title  of  the  German  Dryden  ! 

Note  63.   Page  386. 

This  the  reader  might  be  apt  to  doubt,  if  he  were  to  judge  of 
French  grammar  by  French  orthography.  Until  recently  —  that 
is,  through  the  last  thirty  years  —  very  few  people  in  France,  even 
of  the  educated  classes,  could  spell.  They  spelt  by  procuration. 
The  compositors  of  the  press  held  a  general  power-of-attorney  to 
spell  for  universal  France.  A  fac  simile  of  the  spelling  which 
prevailed  amongst  the  royal  family  of  France  at  the  time  of  the 
elder  Revolution  is  given  in  Clery's  journal  :  it  is  terrific.  Such 
forms  occur,  for  instance,  as  J'avoient  (J'avois)  for  I  had:  J'ete 
(etois)  for  /  was.  But,  in  publishing  such  facts,  the  reader  is  not 
to  imagine  that  Clery  meant  to  expose  anything  needing  conceal- 
ment.   All  people  of  distinction  spelled  in  that  lawless  way  ;  and 


NOTES.  665 

the  loyal  valet  doubtless  no  more  thought  it  decorous  for  a  man  of 
rank  to  spell  his  own  spelling,  than  to  clean  his  own  shoes  or  to 
wash  his  own  linen.  "  Base  is  the  man  who  pays,"  says  Ancient 
Pistol  ;  "base  is  the  man  who  spells,"  said  the  French  of  that 
aentury.  It  would  have  been  vulgar  to  spell  decently ;  and  it  was  not 
illiterate  to  spell  abominably  ;  for  literary  men  spelled  not  at  all 
better  :  they  also  spelled  by  proxy,  and  by  grace  of  compositors. 

Note  64.    Page  387. 
By  Heinze,  if  I  recollect ;  and  founded  partly  on  that  of  WolflF 

Note  65.    Page  387. 

Foreigners  do  not  often  go  so  far  as  this  ;  and  yet  an  American, 
in  his  ♦'  Sketches  of  Turkey  "  (New  York,  1833),  characterizes  the 
German  (p.  478)  not  only  as  a  soft  and  melodious  language,  but 
absolutely  as  "the  softest  of  all  European  languages."  Schiller 
and  Goethe  had  a  notion  that  it  was  capable  of  being  hammered 
into  euphony,  that  it  was  by  possibility  malleable  in  that  respect, 
but  then  only  by  great  labor  of  selection,  and  as  a  trick  of  rope- 
dancing  ingenuity. 

Note  66.    Page  393. 

"  Transcendental.^'' — Kant,  who  was  the  most  sincere,  honora- 
ble, and  truthful  of  human  beings,  always  understood  himself.  He 
hated  tricks,  disgaises,  or  mystifications,  simulation  equally  with 
dissimulation  ;  and  his  love  of  the  English  was  built  avowedly 
on  their  veracity.  So  far  he  is  a  delightful  pei'son  to  deal  with. 
On  the  other  hand,  of  all  men  he  had  the  least  talent  for  explain- 
ing himself,  or  communicating  his  views  to  othei-s.  Whenever 
Kant  undertakes  to  render  into  popular  language  the  secrets  of 
metaphysics,  one  inevitably  thinks  of  Bardolph's  attempt  to  ana- 
lyze and  justifj  the  word  accommodation  :  —  ^'Accommodation  — 
that  is,  when  a  man  is  (as  they  say)  accommodated  ;  or  when  a 
man  is  being  whereby  he  may  be  thought  to  be  accommodated, 
which  is  an  excellent  thing."  There  are  sometimes  Eleusinian 
mysteries,  sealed  by  nature  herself,  the  mighty  mother,  as  apor' 
'eta,  things  essentially  ineffable  and  unutterable  in  vulgar  ears. 
tioug,  for  instance,  he  labored,  but  vainly  he  labored,  to  render 


566 


hOTEB. 


Intelligible  the  scholastic  idea  of  the  transcendental.  This  should 
have  been  easy  to  deal  with  ;  for  on  the  one  side  lay  the  tramcen^ 
dent,  on  the  other  the  immanent,  two  buoys  to  map  out  the  chan- 
nel ;  and  yet  did  Kant,  throughout  his  long  life,  fail  to  satisfy  any 
one  man  who  was  not  previously  and  independently  in  possession 
of  the  idea.  Difficulties  of  this  nature  should  seem  as  little  related 
to  artifice  of  style  and  diction  as  geometrical  difficulties  ;  and  yet 
it  is  certain  that,  by  throwing  the  stress  and  emphasis  of  the  per- 
plexity upon  the  exact  verbal  7iodus  of  the  problem,  a  better 
structure  of  his  sentences  would  have  guided  Kant  to  a  readier 
apprehension  of  the  real  shape  which  the  difficulty  assumed  to  the 
ordinary  student 

NoTK  67.    Page  406. 

"Southey  affirmed:  " — namely,  in  the  "  Letters  of  Espriella," 
an  imaginary  Spaniard  on  a  visit  to  England,  about  the  year  1810. 

Note  68.    Page  408. 

"  Too  much  wealth  .•  "  —  Mr.  Landor,  who  should  know  best, 
Bpeaks  of  himself  (once  at  least),  as  "  poor  ;  "  but  thai  is  all  non- 
sense. I  have  known  several  people  with  annual  incomes  border- 
ing on  twenty  thousand  pounds,  who  spoke  of  themselves,  and 
seemed  seriously  to  think  themselves,  unhappy  '•  paupers."  Lady 
Hester  Stanhope,  with  twenty-seven  hundred  pounds  a  year  (of 
which  about  twelve  arose  from  her  government  pension),  and  with- 
out one  solitary  dependent  in  her  train,  thought  herself  rich  enough 
to  become  a  queen  (an  Arabic  maleky)  in  the  Syrian  mountains, 
but  an  absolute  pauper  for  London  ;  "  for  how,  you  know"  (as 
she  would  say,  pathetically),  "  could  the  humblest  of  spinsters 
live  decently  upon  that  pittance  ?  " 

Note  69.    Page  411. 

"  From  Hegel :  "  —  I  am  not  prepared  with  an  affidavit  that 
no  man  ever  read  Mr.  Hegel,  that  great  master  of  the  impenetrabla 
But  sufficient  evidence  of  that  ftict,  as  I  conceive,  may  be  drawr 
t'om  those  who  have  written  commentaries  upon  him. 


HOTB8.  567 

Note  70.     Page  418. 

"  Freshness  in  the  public  mind :  " — Ten  or  a  dozen  years  ago,  when 
ills  was  written,  the  atrocity  of  Dahra  was  familiar  to  the  readers  of 
newspapers:  it  is  now  forgotten  ;  and  therefore  I  retrace  it  briefly. 
The  French  in  Algiers,  upon  occasion  of  some  razzia  against  a  party 
of  Arabs,  hunted  them  into  the  cave  or  caves  of  Dahra;  and,  upon 
the  refusal  of  the  Arabs  to  surrender,  filled  up  the  mouth  of  their 
retreat  with  combustibles,  and  eventually  roasted  alive  the  whole 
party — men,  women,  and  children.  The  Mardchal  St.  Arnaud,  who 
subsequently  died  in  supreme  command'  of  the  French  army  before 
Sebastopol,  was  said  to  have  been  coi^erned  as  a  principal  in  this 
atrocity.  Meantime  the  Arabs  are  not  rightfully  or  specially  any 
objects  of  legitimate  sympathy  in  such  a  case;  for  thej'  are  quite 
capable  of  similar  cruelties  under  any  movement  of  religious  fanati- 
cism. 

Note  71.   Page  420. 

Wale  (Germanice  wahl),  the  old  ballad  word  for  choice.  But 
the  motive  for  using  it  in  this  place  is  in  allusion  to  an  excellent 
old  Scottish  story  (not  sufficiently  known  in  the  south),  of  a  rus- 
tic laird,  who  profited  by  the  hospitality  of  his  neighbors, 
duly  to  get  drunk  once  (and  no  more)  every  lawful  night, 
returning  in  the  happiest  frame  of  mind  under  the  escort  of 
his  servant  Andrew.  In  spite  of  Andrew,  however,  it  sometimes 
happened  that  the  laird  fell  off  his  horse  ;  and  on  one  of  these  occa- 
sions, as  he  himself  was  dismounted  from  his  saddle,  his  wig  was 
dismounted  from  his  cranium.  Both  fell  into  a  peat-moss,  and 
both  were  fished  out  by  Andrew.  But  the  laird,  in  his  confusion, 
putting  on  the  wig  wrong  side  before,  reasonably  "  jaloused  "  that 
this  could  not  be  his  own  wig,  but  some  other  man's,  which  sus- 
picion he  communicated  to  Andrew,  who  argued  contra  by  the 
memorable  reply  —  "Hout,  laird  !  there's  nae  wale  o'  wigs  i'  a 
peat-moss." 

Note  72.   Page  421. 

Milton,  in  uttering  his  grief  (but  also  his  hopes  growing  out 
pi  his  grief)  upon  a  similar  tragedy,  namely,  the  massacre  of 
the  Protestant  women  and  children  by  "  the  bloody  Piedmontese. 


568 


NOTES. 


Note  73.  Page  425. 

"Modern  military  life:"  —  By  modern  I  mean  sincp  the 
opening  of  the  thirty  years*  war.  In  this  w.ir,  the  sack,  or  'partial 
sack,  of  Magdeburg,  will  c^our  to  the  reader  as  one  or  tliC  worst 
amongst  martial  ruilianisms.  But  this  happens  tc  he  a  hoay.  It 
is  an  old  experience,  that,  when  once  the  demure  muse  of  history 
has  allowed  herself  to  tell  a  lie,  she  never  retracts  it.  Many  ar^ 
the  falsehoods  in  our  own  history,  which  our  children  read  tradi- 
tionally for  truths,  merely  because  our  uncritical  grandfathers 
believed  them  to  be  such.  Magdeburg  was  not  sacked.  What 
fault  there  was  in  the  case  belonged  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  who 
certainly  was  remiss  in  this  instance,  though  with  excuses  more 
than  were  hearkened  to  at  that  time.  Tilly,  the  Bavarian  general 
had  no  reason  for  severity  in  this  case,  and  showed  none.  Accord- 
ing to  the  regular  routine  of  war,  Magdeburg  had  become  forfeiteti 
to  military  execution  ;  which,  let  the  reader  remember,  was  not, 
in  those  days,  a  right  of  the  general  as  against  the  enemy,  and  by 
way  of  salutary  warning  to  other  cities,  lest  they  also  should  abuse 
the  right  of  a  reasonable  defence,  but  was  a  right  of  the  soldiery 
as  against  their  own  leaders.  A  town  stormed  was  then  a  little 
perquisite  to  the  ill-fed  and  ill-paid  soldiei's.  So  of  prisoners.  If 
I  made  a  prisoner  of  "  Signer  Drew"  [see  Henry  V.],  it  was  my 
business  to  fix  his  ransom  ;  the  general  had  no  business  to  inter- 
fere with  that.  Magdeburg,  therefore,  had  incurred  the  common 
penalty  (which  she  must  have  foreseen)  of  obstinacy  ;  and  the  only 
diiference  between  her  case  and  that  of  many  another  brave  little 
town,  that  quietly  submitted  to  the  usual  martyrdom,  without  howl 
ing  through  all  the  speaking-trumpets  of  history,  was  this —  that 
he  penalty  was,  upon  Magdeburg,  but  partially  enforced.  Harte, 
the  tutor  of  Lord  Chesterfield's  son,  first  published,  in  his  Life  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  an  authentic  diary  of  what  passed  at  that 
lime,  kept  by  a  Lutheran  clergyman.  This  diary  shows  sufficiently 
that  no  real  departures  were  made  from  the  customary  routine, 
except  in  the  direction  of  mercy.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  people 
of  Magdeburg  were  a  sort  of  German  hogs,  of  whom,  it  is  notori- 
ous, that  if  you  attempt  in  the  kindest  way  to  shear  them,  all  you 
get  is  horrible  yelling,  and  (the  proverb  asserts)  very  little  wool 
The  case  being  a  classical  one  in  the  annals  of  military  outrages. 
I  have  noticed  its  real  features. 


HOTEB.  569 

Note  74.    Page  428. 

"  Melanchthon'' s  profound  Iheory.'"  — That  the  reader  may  not 
suppose  me  misrepi-esenting  Mr.  L.,  I  subjoin  his  words,  p.  224, 
vol.  1  : — "  The  evil  of  idolatry  is  this  —  rival  nations  have  raised 
up  rival  deities  ;  war  hath  been  denounced  in  the  name  of  Heaven  : 
men  have  been  murdered  for  the  love  of  God  ;  and  such  impiety 
hath  darkened  all  the  regions  of  the  world,  that  the  Lord  of  all 
things  hath  been  mocked  by  all  simultaneously  as  the  Lord  of 
hosts."  The  evil  of  idolatry  is,  not  that  it  disfigures  the  Deity 
(in  which,  it  seems,  there  might  be  no  great  harm),  but  that  one 
man's  disfiguration  difiers  from  another  man's  ;  which  leads  tfl 
quarrelling,  and  that  to  fighting 

Note  75.    Page  429. 

"  Grecian  disguise  :  "  —  The  tnie  German  name  of  this  learned 
reformer  was  Schwarzerd  (black  earth);  but  the  homeliness  and 
pun-proToking  quality  of  such  a  designation  induced  Melanchthon 
to  mask  it  in  Greek.  By  the  way,  I  do  not  understand  how  Mr. 
Laudor,  the  arch-purist  in  orthography,  reconciles  his  spelling  of 
the  name  to  Greek  orthodoxy  ;  there  is  no  Greek  word  that  could 
be  expressed  by  the  English  syllable  "cthon."  Such  a  word  as 
Melancthon*  would  be  a  hybrid  monster  —  neither  fish,  flesh,  nor 
good  red  herring. 

Note  76.   Page  432. 

An  equal  mistake  it  is  in  Mr.  Landor  to  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Person  any  vituperation  of  Mathias  as  one  that  had  uttered  opin- 
ions  upon  Wordsworth.  In  the  Pursuits  of  Literature,  down  to 
the  fifteenth  edition,  there  is  no  mention  of  Wordsworth's  name. 
Southey  is  mentioned  slightingly,  and  chiefly  with  reference  to  hia 
then  democratic  principles  ;  but  not  Coleridge,  and  not  Words- 
worth. Mathias  soon  after  went  to  Italy,  where  he  passed  the 
remainder  of  his  life  —  died,  I  believe,  and  was  buried  —  never, 
perhaps,  having  heard  the  name  of  Wordsworth.     As  to  Person, 

*  The  reader  of  this  edition  will  notice  that  the  American  printer  has  altere<1 
tlie  spelling  in  the  text,  without  reference  to  Mr.  De  Quincey's  remarks  on  Mr 
Landor's  metlisd. 


570  KOTEB. 

it  is  very  true  that  Mathias  took  a  few  liberties  with  his  private 
habits,  such  as  his  writing  paragraphs  iu  the  little  cabinet  fitted 
up  for  the  gens  de  plume,  at  the  Mor7iing  Chronicle  office,  anil 
other  trifles.  But  these,  though  impertinences,  were  not  of  a 
nature  seriously  to  offend.  They  rather  flattered,  by  the  interest 
which  they  argued  in  his  movements.  And  with  regard  to  Por- 
son's  main  pretension,  his  exquisite  skill  in  Greek,  Mathias  waa 
not  the  man  to  admire  this  too  little  ;  his  weakness,  if  in  that 
"point  he  had  a  weakness,  lay  in  the  opposite  direction.  His  own 
Greek  was  not  a  burthen  that  could  have  foundered  a  camel  ;  he 
was  neither  accurate,  nor  extensive,  nor  profound.  But  yet  Mr. 
Landor  is  wrong  in  thinking  that  he  drew  it  from  an  Index.  In 
his  Italian,  he  had  the  advantage  probably  of  Mi.  Landor  himsell; 
at  least  he  wrote  it  with  more  apparent  fluency  and  compass. 

Note  77.     Page  435. 

*' Susurrus:" — The  reader,  who  has  had  any  experience  of  stable 
usages,  will  know  that  grooms  always  keep  up  a  hissing  accompani- 
ment whilst  currycombing  a  horse  as  paviours  do  a  groanmg. 

Note  78.     Page  443. 

Herod  the  Great,  and  his  father  Antipater,  owed  the  favor  of 
Rome,  and,  finally,  the  throne  of  Judaea,  to  the  seasonable  elec- 
tion which  they  made  between  Rome  and  Persia  ;  but  made  net 
without  some  doubts,  as  between  forces  hardly  yet  brought  to  a 
satisfactory  equation. 

Note  79.     Page  446. 

"Stooped  not  to  accept  it."  —  The  notion  that  Julius  Caesar, 
who  of  all  men  must  have  held  cheapest  the  title  of  Rex,  had 
seriously  intrigued  to  obtain  it,  arose  (as  I  conceive)  from  two 
mistakes  —  first.  From  a  misinterpretation  of  a  figurative  cere- 
mony in  the  pageant  of  the  Lupercalia.  The  Romans  were 
ridiculously  punctilious  in  this  kind  of  jealousy.  They  charged 
Pompey,  at  one  time,  with  a  plot  for  making  himself  king,  bfr- 
sause  he  wore  white  bandages  round  his  thighs  ;  nojy  white,  in 


NOTKg. 


571 


Dldon  days,  was  as  much  the  regal  color  as  purple.  Think,  deal 
reader,  of  us  — of  you  and  me  —  being  charged  with  making 
ourselves  kings,  because  we  may  choose  to  wear  white  cotton 
drawers.  Pompey  was  very  angry,  and  swore  bloody  oaths  tha* 
It  was  not  ambition  which  had  cased  his  thighs  in  white  fasctcB 
"  Why,  what  is  it  then  ?  "  said  a  grave  citizen.  "  What  is  it, 
man?"  replied  Pompey,  "  it  is  rheumatism."  Dogberry  must 
have  had  a  hand  in  this  charge  :  —  "  Dost  thou  hear,  thou  varlet  ? 
Thou  art  charged  with  incivism  ;  and  it  shall  go  hard  with  me 
but  I  will  prove  thee  to  thy  face  a  false  knave,  and  guilty  of  flat 
rheumatism. ' '  The  other  reason  which  has  tended  to  confirm  pos- 
terity in  the  belief  that  Caesar  really  coveted  the  title  ot  Rex,  was 
ihe  confusion  of  the  truth  arising  with  Greek  writers.  Basileus, 
the  term  by  which  indifferently  they  designated  the  mighty  Artax- 
erxes  and  the  pettiest  regulus,  was  the  original  translation  used 
for  Imperaior.  Subsequently,  and  especially  after  Dioclesian  had 
approximated  the  aulic  pomps  to  eastern  models,  the  terms  ^uto- 
orator,  Kaisar,  Augustus,  Sebastos,  &c.,  came  more  into  usa  But 
after  Trajan's  time,  or  even  to  that  of  Commodus,  generally  the 
same  terms  which  expressed  Imperator  and  Imperitorial  [viz., 
Basileus  and  Basilikos']  to  a  Grecian  ear  expressed  Rex  and 
Re  galls. 

Note  80.     Page  453. 

"Tts;"  —  Scotchmen  and  Irishmen  (for  a  reason  which 
it  may  be  elsewhere  worth  while  explaining)  make  the  same 
mistake  of  supposing  H  is  and  'f  was  admissible  in  prose  ;  which  is 
shocking  to  an  English  ear,  for  since  1740  they  have  become  essen- 
tially poetic  forms,  and  cannot,  without  a  sense  of  painful  affecta- 
tion and  sentimentality,  be  used  in  conversation  or  in  any  mode 
of  prose.  Mr.  Landor  does  not  make  that  mistake,  but  the  redu- 
plication of  the  't  is  in  this  line,  —  will  he  permit  me  to  say  ?  —  is 
dreadful.  He  is  wide  awake  to  such  blemishes  in  other  men  of  all 
nations  ;  so  am  I.  He  blazes  away  all  day  long  against  the  tres- 
passes of  that  class,  like  a  man  in  spring,  protecting  corn-fields 
igainst  birds.  So  do  I  at  times.  And  if  ever  I  publish  that  work 
on  Style,  which  for  years  has  been  in  preparation,  I  fear  that,  from 
Mr.  Landor,  it  will  be  necessary  to  cull  some  striking  flaws  in 
composition,  were  it  only  that  in  his  works  must  be  sought  some 
of  its  most  striking  brilliancies. 


572 


Note  81.    Page  454. 


"Rocky  harp:"  —  There  are  now  known  other  cases,  besid<« 
the  ancient  one  of  Memnon's  statue,  in  which  the  "deep-grooved  " 
granites,  or  even  the  shifting  sands  of  wildernesses,  utter  myste- 
rious music  to  ears  that  watch  and  wait  for  the  proper  combina- 
tion of  circumstances 

Note  82.    Page  469. 

"  Would  then: " — This  is  a  most  important  caveat:  many  thousands 
of  exquisite  lines  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth,  James,  Charles,  down  even 
to  1658  (last  of  Cromwell),  are  ruined  by  readers  untrained  to  the 
elder  dissyllabic  (not  monosyllabic)  treatment  of  the  twn. 

Note  83.    Page  472. 

Mr.  Craik,  who  is  a  great  authority  on  such  subjects,  favoured  me 
some  ten  or  twelve  years  ago  with  a  letter  on  this  line.  He  viewed 
it  as  a  variety  more  or  less  irregular,  but  regular  as  regarded  its 
model,  of  the  dramatic  or  scenical  verse — privileged  to  the  extent 
of  an  extra  syllable,  but  sometimes  stretching  its  privilege  a  little 
further. 

Note  84.  Page  479. 
*  Iloberte  the  Deville : '  —  See  the  old  metrical  romance  of  th&t 
name  :  it  belongs  to  the  fourteenth  century,  and  was  printed 
some  thirty  years  ago,  with  wood  engravings  of  the  illuminations. 
Roberte,  however,  took  the  liberty  of  murdering  his  schoolmaster. 
But  could  he  well  do  less  ?  Being  a  reigning  Duke's  son,  and 
after  the  rebellious  schoolmaster  had  said  — 

'  Sir,  ye  bee  too  bolde : 
And  therewith  tooke  a  rodde  hymfor  to  chaste.* 

Upon  which  the  meek  Robin,  without  using  any  bad  language  an 
the  schoolmaster  had  done,  simply  took  out  a  long  dagger  '  hym 
for  to  chaste,^  which  he  did  eifectually.  The  schoolmaster  gave 
no  bad  language  after  that. 

Note  85.   Page  482. 
Mitford,  who  was  the  brother  of  a  man  better  known  than  hin^ 
Belf  to  the  public  eye,  viz..  Lord  Redesdale,  may  be  considered  a 
very  unfortunat*.  author.     His  work  upon  Greece,  which  Lord 


NOTES.  573 

Byron  celebrated  for  its  *  wrath  and  its  partiality,  really  had 
those  merits  :  choleric  it  was  in  excess,  and  as  entirely  partial, 
as  nearly  perfect  in  its  injustice,  as  human  infirmity  vrould 
allow.  Nothing  is  truly  perfect  in  this  shocking  world;  absolute 
injustice,  alas  1  the  perfection  of  wrong,  must  not  be  looked  for 
until  we  reach  some  high  Platonic  form  of  polity.  Then  shall  we 
revel  and  bask  in  a  vertical  sun  of  iniquity.  Meantime,  I  will 
say  —  that  to  satisfy  all  bilious  and  unreasonable  men,  a  better 
historian  of  Greece,  than  Mitford,  could  not  be  fancied.  And 
yet,  at  the  very  moment  when  he  was  stepping  into  his  harvest 
of  popularity,  down  comes  one  of  those  omnivorous  Germans  that, 
by  j-eadLng  everything  and  a  trifle  besides,  contrive  to  throw 
really  learned  men  —  and  perhaps  better  thinkers  than  them- 
seves —  into  the  shade.  Ottfried  Mueller,  with  other  archsolo- 
gists  and  travellers  into  Hellas,  gave  new  aspects  to  the  very 
purposes  of  Grecian  history.  Do  j'ou  hear,  reader  ?  not  new 
answers,  but  new  questions  And  Mitford,  that  was  gradually 
displacing  the  unlearned  Gillies,  &c.,  was  himself  displaced  by 
those  who  intrigued  with  Germany.  His  other  work  on  '  the 
Harmony  of  Language,'  though  one  of  the  many  that  attempted, 
and  the  few  that  accomplished,  the  distinction  between  accent  and 
quantity,  or  learnedly  appreciated  the  metrical  science  of  Milton, 
was  yet,  in  my  hearing,  pronounced  utterly  intelligible  by  the 
hest  practical  commentator  on  Milton,  viz.,  the  best  reproducer 
of  his  exquisite  efi'ects  in  blank  verse,  that  any  generation  since 
Milton  has  been  able  to  show.  ilr.  Mitford  was  one  of  the  many 
accomplished  scholars  that  are  ill-used.  Had  he  possessed  the 
splendid  powers  of  the  Landor,  he  would  have  raised  a  clatter 
on  the  armor  of  modern  society,  such  as  Samson  threatened  to 
the  giant  Harapha.  For,  in  many  respects,  he  resembled  the 
Landor  :  he  had  much  of  his  learning  —  he  had  the  same  exten- 
sive access  to  books  and  influential  circles  in  great  cities  —  the 
same  gloomy  disdain  of  popular  falsehoods  or  commonplaces  — 
and  the  same  disposition  to  run  a-muck  against  all  nations,  lan- 
guages, and  speUing-books. 

Note  86.  Page  483. 
*  In  fact,  a  JVew  Englander.'  —  This   explanation,   upon  a 
vaatter  familiar  to  the  well-informed,  it  is  proper  to  repeat  occa- 


574:  NOTES. 

eionally,  because  we  English  exceedingly  perplex  and  confound 
the  Americans  by  calling,  for  instance,  a  Virginian  or  a  Kentuck 
by  the  name  of  Yankee,  whilst  that  term  was  originally  intro- 
duced as  antithetic  to  these  more  southern  States. 

Note  87.   Page  485. 

Pinkerton  published  one  of  his  earliest  volumes,  under  this 
title  — '  Rimes,  by  Mr.  Pinkerton,'  not  having  the  fear  of  Ritson 
before  his  eyes.  And,  for  once,  we  have  reason  to  thank  Ritson 
for  his  remark  —  that  the  form  Mr.  might  just  as  well  be  read 
Monster.  Pinkerton  in  this  point  was  a  perfect  monster.  Afl 
to  the  word  Rimes,  instead  of  Rhymes,  he  had  something  to 
stand  upon ;  the  Greek  rythmos  was  certainly  the  remote  foun- 
tain; but  the  proximate  fountain  must  have  been  the  Italian 
rima. 

Note  88.   Page  486. 

The  most  extravagant  of  all  experiments  on  language  is 
brought  forward  in  the  '  Letters  of  Literature,  by  Robert  Heron.' 
But  Robert  Heron  is  a  pseudonyme  for  John  Pinkerton  ;  and  I 
have  been  told  that  Pinkerton's  motive  for  assuming  it  was  — 
because  Heron  had  been  the  maiden  name  of  his  mother.  Poor 
lady,  she  would  have  stared  to  find  herself,  in  old  age,  trans- 
formed into  Mistressina  Heronilla.  What  most  amuses  one  in 
pursuing  the  steps  of  such  an  attempt  at  refinement,  is  its  recep- 
Uon  by  '  Jack  '  in  the  navy. 

NoiB  89.  Page  486. 
•  It  ever  was  '  —  and,  of  course,  being  (as  there  is  no  need  to 
tell  Mr.  Landor)  a  form  obtained  by  contraction  from  fidelita*. 

Note  90.  Page  487. 
Of  this  a  ludicrous  illustration  is  mentioned  by  the  writer 
..nee  known  to  the  public  as  Trinity  Jones.  Some  young  cler- 
gyman, unacquainted  with  the  technical  use  of  italics  by  the 
original  compositors  of  James  the  First's  Bible,  on  coming  to  the 
27th  verse,  chap.  xiii.  of  1st  Kings,  'And  he'  (viz.,  the  old 
prophet  of  Bethel)  ♦  spake  to  his  sons,  saying.  Saddle  me  the 
ftss.  And  they  saddled  him ;  '  (where  the  italic  him,  simply 
meant  that  this  word  was  involved,  but  not  expressed,  in  the 


NOTES.  575 

■original,)  read  it,  •  And  they  saddled  him  ; '  as  though  thes« 
andutiful  sons,  instead  of  saddling  the  donkey,  had  saddled  the 
old  prophet.  In  fact,  the  old  gentleman's  directions  are  not 
quite  without  an  opening  for  a  filial  misconception,  if  the  reader 
examines  them  as  closely  as  /  examine  words. 

Wote91.  Page  487. 
He  uses  this    and    similar  artifices,  in  fact,  as  the  damper 
in  a  modern  piano-forte,  for  modyfy'ng  the  swell  of  the  intona- 
tion. 

Note  92.  Page  492. 
The  reasons  for  this  anarchy  in  the  naturalization  of  Eastern 
words  are  to  be  sought  in  three  causes :  1.  In  national  rival- 
ships  :  French  travellers  in  India,  like  Jacquemont,  &c.,  as  they 
will  not  adopt  oui*  English  First  Meridian,  will  not,  of  course, 
adopt  our  English  spelling.  In  one  of  Paul  Richter's  novels  a 
man  assumes  the  First  Meridian  to  lie  generally,  not  through 
Greenwich,  but  through  his  own  skuU,  and  always  through  his 
own  study.  I  have  myself  long  suspected  the  Magnetic  Pole  to 
lie  under  a  friend's  wine-cellar,  from  the  vibrating  movement 
which  I  have  remarked  constantly  going  on  in  his  cluster  of  keya 
towards  that  particular  point.  Really,  the  French,  like  Sir 
Anthony  Absolute,  must  '  get  an  atmosphere  of  their  own,'  such 
is  their  hatred  to  holding  anything  in  common  with  us.  2.  They 
are  to  be  sought  in  local  Indian  differences  of  pronunciation.  3. 
In  the  variety  of  our  own  British  population  —  soldiers,  mission- 
aries, merchants,  who  are  unlearned  or  half-learned  —  scholars, 
really  learned,  but  often  fantastically  learned,  and  lastly  (as  you 
may  swear)  young  ladies  —  anxious,  above  all  things,  to  mystifc 
OS  outside  barbarians. 

Note  93.    Page  497. 

William  Wordswoi '.h  had,  on  the  death  of  Southey,  accepted  th# 
aureateship. 

Note  94.    Page  498. 
'  Modem  rector:  "—viz.,  Lord  Brougham. 


576  KOTBS. 


Note  95.    Page  510. 

"  Dirty  half-hundred : '^ — By  an  old  military  jest,  which  probably 
had  at  first  some  foundation  in  fact,  the  50th  regiment  of  foot  has 
been  so  styled  for  above  a  century. 

Note  96.    Page  511. 

"The  Wanderer"  (as  should  be  explained  to  the  reader)  is  the 
technical  designation  of  the  presiding  philosopher  in  Wordsworth's 
"Excursion." 

Note  97.     Page  511. 

'^ Balby's  carminative:" — This,  and  another  similar  remedy,  called 
Godfrey's  cordial,  both  owing  their  main  agencies  to  opium,  have 
through  generations  been  the  chief  resource  of  poor  mothers  when 
embaiTassed  in  their  daily  labours  by  fretful  infants.  Fine  ladies 
have  no  such  difficulty  to  face,  and  are  apt  to  forget  that  there  is  any 
Buch  apology  to  plead. 

Note  98.    Page  531. 

[The  Preface  to  the  volume  in  the  English  edition,  containing  the 
paper  on  Wordsworth's  Poetry,  has  the  following  comments  by  De 
Quincey  on  this  essay.] 

With  regard  to  Wordsworth,  what  I  chiefly  regret  is  —  that  I 
could  not,  under  the  circumstances  of  the  case,  obtain  room  for  pur- 
suing further  the  great  question  (first  moved  controversially  by 
Wordsworth)  of  Poetic  Diction.  It  is  remarkable  enough,  as  illus- 
trating the  vapoury  character  of  all  that  philosophy  which  Coleridge 
and  Wordsworth  professed  to  hold  in  common,  that,  after  twenty 
years  of  close  ostensible  agreement,  it  turned  out,  when  accident  led 
them  to  a  printed  utterance  of  their  several  views,  that  not  one  ves- 
tige of  true  and  virtual  harmony  existed  to  unite  them.  Between 
Fancy,  for  instance,  and  Imagination,  they  both  agreed  that  a  dis- 
tinction, deep,  practical,  and  vitally  operative,  had  slept  unnoticed 
for  ages;  that,  first  of  all,  in  an  earty  stage  of  this  revolutionary 
mineteenth  century,  that  distinction  was  descried  upon  the  psycho- 
logical field  of  vision  by  Wordsworth,  or  by  Coleridge;  but  naturally 
the  accurate  demanded  to  know  —  by  which.  And  to  this  no  an 
swer  could  ever  be  obtained.  Finally,  however,  it  transpired  that 
any  answer  would  be  nugatory;  since,  on  coming  to  distinct  expla- 
nations upon  the  subject,  in  print,  the  two  authorities  flatly,  and 
through  the  whole  gamut  of  illustrative  cases,  contradicted  each 


NOTES.  577 

other.  Precisely  the  same  (or,  at  least,  precisely  an  equal)  agree- 
ment had  originally  existed  between  the  two  philosophic  poets  on 
the  laws  and  quality  of  Poetic  Diction ;  and  there  again,  after  many 
years  of  supposed  pacific  harmony,  all  at  once  precisely  the  same 
unfathomable  chasm  of  chaotic  Schism  opened  between  them.  Chaos, 
however,  is  the  natural  prologue  to  Creation,  and  although  neither 
Coleridge  nor  VTordsworth  has  left  anything  written  upon  this  sub- 
ject, which  does  not  tend  seemingly  to  a  baiTen  result,  nevertheless, 
there  is  still  fermenting  an  unsatisfied  doubt  upon  the  question  of 
the  true  and  the  false  in  poetic  diction,  which  dates  from  the  dayg 
of  Euripides.  "What  were  the  views  of  Euripides  can  now  be  gath- 
ered only  from  his  practice ;  but  from  that  (which  was  not  unobserved 
by  Valckenaer)  I  infer  that  he  was  secretly  governed  by  the  same 
feelings  on  this  subject  as  Wordsworth.  But  between  the  two  poets 
there  was  this  difference:  Euripides*  was  perhaps  in  a  state  of  un- 
conscious sympathy  with  the  views  subsequently  h  eld  by  Wordsworth 
so  that,  except  by  his  practice,  he  could  not  promote  those  views;  but 
Wordsworth  held  them  consciously  and  earnestly,  and  purely  from 
Sybaritish  indolence  failed  to  illustrate  them.  Even  Coleridge, 
though  indulgent  enough  to  such  an  infirmity,  was  a  little  scandal- 
ized at  the  excess  of  this  morbid  affection  in  Wordsworth.  The  old 
original  illustrations — two,  three,  or  perhaps  three  and  a-quarter — 
cited  from  Gray  and  Prior ;  these — and  absolutely  not  enlarged 
through  a  fifty  years'  additional  experience — were  all  that  Words- 
worth put  forward  to  the  end  of  his  life.  Any  decent  measure  of 
exertion  would  have  easily  added  a  crop  of  five  thousand  further 
cases.  This  excess  of  inertia,  this  (which  the  ancients  would  have 
called)  sacred  laziness,  operating  upon  a  favoured  theorj',  is  in  it- 
self a  not  uninteresting  spectacle  for  a  contemplative  man.  But  a 
still  stranger  subject  for  cynical  contemplation  is,  that,  after  all  (as 
hereafter  I  believe  it  possible  to  show),  Wordsworth  has  failed  to 
establish  his  theory,  not  simply  through  morbid  excesses  of  holy 
idleness,  but  also  through  entire  misconception  of  his  own  meanmg, 
and  blind  aberration  from  the  road  on  which  he  fancied  himself 
moving. 

*  That  Euripides,  consciously  or  not,  had  a  secret  craving  for  the  natural 
Mid  life-like  in  diction,  is  noticed  by  Valckenaer  in  his  great  dissertation 
■pon  the  Fhoenissae. 


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